Abortion debate in Northern Ireland highlights the tensions of devolution

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.

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