Eamon Martin, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All-Ireland, has rejected an announcement by Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris to fast-track the commissioning of abortion services in Northern Ireland.
The Archbishop has questioned the priorities of Westminster at a time when “people are struggling to feed their children and heat their homes, and as our overstretched health workers are barely coping under the pressure of financial constraints”.
The move comes after Northern Ireland’s abortion laws were liberalised in 2019 following legislation passed by Westminster at a time when the power-sharing government at Stormont had collapsed.
While many celebrated this decision by the UK government to by-pass democratic processes in Northern Ireland, critics are concerned by the heavy-handed imposition taken by Westminster in contrast to its laissez-faire approach to the political impasse in Northern Ireland that has seen the province without a functioning government since the Assembly was suspended in February 2022.
The Archbishop highlights that successive Secretaries of States “have been moving with alacrity to expedite the introduction of some of the most extreme and liberal abortion services on these islands, invoking the primacy of Westminster and undermining the principle of devolution”.
The most recent move to push the NI Department of Health to start providing abortion services follows a 2019 vote by MPs in Westminster to introduce widespread abortion in Northern Ireland in line with the regime established in the UK mainland.
For many, this was an opportunistic ideological imposition, taking advantage of the continued failure of the Northern Ireland Assembly to function and govern, sidestepping a democratic process in Northern Ireland to determine the will of its population and to legislate for itself under the principles established by the Good Friday agreement, and the Catholic principle of subsidiarity.
Currently, a challenge to the government’s legal authority to establish abortion services in Northern Ireland is under way in the Court of Appeal. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) argues it should be for Stormont politicians to decide on the issue, an argument rejected by the High Court in February, determining that former Secretary of State had been compelled to act by the 2019 Westminster vote, the majority being politicians from England voting on very sensitive matters on the island of Ireland.
Mr Justice Colton found that the Secretary of State had carried out his legal obligations after a United Nations body found the UK had breached the rights of women in Northern Ireland by limiting access to abortions, effectively offering Westminster the cover to impose itself on the people of Northern Ireland under the guise of human rights.
The commissioning of abortion services in Northern Ireland follows a 2018 referendum in the Republic of Ireland which removed the constitutional protection of the life of the unborn child (the 8th Amendment) which had been in place since 1983.
Since the introduction of legalised abortion in the Republic in 2019, there has been a 70 per cent increase in the numbers of Irish children aborted – 6,700 abortions occurred in 2021 and nearly 20,000 abortions have taken place over the three-year period since the law in Ireland was changed.
A government-led review, required after three years, has been criticised as not including a wide range of interested parties, with a particular concern about the possibility of removing the three-day waiting period for women seeking abortion.
Independent Irish parliamentarian Carol Nolan noted that “figures released to me by the Department of Health showed that 870 women changed their minds after the first consultation during the three-day reflection period, and did not proceed with the abortion.”
In the North, campaigners to protect the life of the unborn have claimed that the absence of abortion legislation has saved over 100,000 lives over the last 40 years. While no one claims those 100,000 now born have no right to life, the Archbishop sees that those coming after them are not going to have the same protection under the law.
“Westminster seems determined to impose, against the clear will of a majority of people here, the undermining of the right to life of unborn children including an abhorrent and indefensible prejudice against persons with disabilities, even before they are born,” he says.
“The abortion regulations being introduced by Westminster are predicated on the assumption that the unborn child in the womb has no right to love, care and protection from society, unless the child is wanted. Nothing could be further from the truth. None of us acquire our humanity, or our fundamental right to existence, on the basis of whether or not we are wanted.”
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