Abortion debate in northern ireland highlights the tensions of devolution | thearticle

Northern Ireland remains deeply divided on questions of nationality and identity, but politics there is increasingly affected by other, equally stark divisions on social issues. Unlike the

rest of the UK and Ireland, the province’s laws do not permit same sex marriage, with the result that there is a noisy and growing campaign for reform. By far the most bitter dispute,

though, is over abortion, which is not permitted in Northern Ireland, outside a limited set of circumstances. The prominence of these emotional debates creates new challenges for Ulster’s

political parties, particularly those that support the Union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. The non-aligned Alliance Party has used social issues to attract younger, more

liberal supporters away from unionist parties, that have traditionally been dominated by a socially conservative outlook. Abortion and same-sex marriage also reveal some of the complexities

and contradictions that devolved government throws up, for politicians who want to strengthen the province’s place in the United Kingdom. When fundamental differences develop between laws in

Northern Ireland and Great Britain, Ulster becomes ever more a ‘place apart’. It gives credibility to arguments for other arrangements, like the Brexit backstop, that create even more

serious discrepancies. Yet, devolution is supposed to allow significant variations across the UK on issues where power is devolved from parliament to the regional assemblies. Equally, for

matters of national importance, like foreign policy, most forms of taxation, immigration and customs, the responsibilities are reserved to Westminster, to protect the integrity of the Union.

In his piece about abortion law in The Article, Lord Alton points out that some British MPs are happy to advocate devolution when it suits, yet they threaten to intervene and legislate over

Stormont’s head, in the case of abortion. The Northern Ireland Assembly voted against reform in 2016 and he fairly points out that there’s an inconsistency at work, in attitudes to devolved

government. This inconsistency is all the more glaring because Theresa May and her ministers have spent nearly eighteen months stubbornly refusing to implement direct-rule in Northern

Ireland, after Sinn Féin collapsed the power-sharing executive. Immediate, pressing problems in hospitals and schools have not been addressed, while political decision-making has

increasingly been left to unaccountable civil servants. For decades, UK-minded Ulster unionists were dismayed by successive governments’ willingness to allow Northern Ireland to diverge in

important ways from the rest of the country. They didn’t necessarily agree with the 1967 Abortion Act, but they worried that the province could be so long excepted from such a fundamental

piece of legislation. Since 1998, though, devolution has established major differences between all the UK’s component nations. We now have, for example, at least three distinct versions of

the NHS. There’s no compelling moral reason why the state should grant different entitlements to people in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the country, where social issues are

concerned, but there’s now no easy way for the government to address these anomalies, without showing contempt for devolution. Ruth Davidson, who is in favour of liberal abortion laws, but

is finely attuned to the nuances of devolved government, provided a neat summary of the dilemma: “if I was a politician in Northern Ireland I would absolutely one hundred percent vote to

change the law, but … I know how angry I would be if the House of Commons legislated on a domestic issue over the head of Holyrood.” The dynamic of the abortion debate in Ulster changed in

May 2018, when the Republic of Ireland voted in a referendum to liberalise its laws. That decision gave the campaign for reform impetus among nationalists, who look to Dublin rather than

London for leadership, and, while there has been a rancorous argument among traditional Catholics and self-styled ‘progressives’, Sinn Féin now supports new legislation, while the SDLP

allows members to vote with their conscience. The Republic allows unrestricted terminations up to twelve weeks into pregnancy, which avoids potentially traumatic late-term abortions that are

available in Britain, but the referendum also showed how discussions on this fraught issue tend to be dominated by extreme positions. On one side, many pro-life campaigners supported the

callous policy that women should be forced to deliver babies with a ‘fatal abnormality’, who would not survive outside the womb. On the other, the ‘yes’ campaign emphasised chillingly

aggressive demands from women for complete personal and bodily autonomy. If anything should demolish the pernicious liberal idea that personal autonomy is an absolute virtue, it is

parenthood or the prospect of parenthood. There’s no room in that worldview for the bonds of responsibility and duty that connect families, communities and generations. It would be

preferable if the debate on abortion in Northern Ireland took place in a soberer atmosphere, without the nasty implication that every termination in every circumstance is a heartless

instance of child-killing and the equally horrible notion that ending a potential life is an empowering lifestyle choice. Personally, I would prefer if devolution had never happened and

there was less exceptionalism across the regions of the UK. Unfortunately, devolved government is established, relatively popular and it’s not going away. In Northern Ireland, it’s dangerous

for unionism if voters believe that unionist parties are using their position persistently to block the kind of social changes they want to see. It’s also self-defeating to allow the

province to become seriously out of step with laws and attitudes in the rest of the UK.