DUBLIN — Abortion legislation in Northern Ireland is “incompatible with human rights,” the Belfast High Court said in a long-awaited judgment on Monday that will put intense pressure on lawmakers to allow terminations in cases of fatal fetal abnormality, rape and incest.

Although Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, the 1967 Abortion Act does not apply there. Abortions are permitted only in cases where a woman’s life is threatened or where there is a permanent or serious risk to her well-being.

Employees at hospitals in Northern Ireland face life in prison if convicted of carrying out an illegal procedure, and hundreds of women in Northern Ireland travel to Britain, primarily England, every year for abortions. More than 800 women did so in 2013, five of them under the age of 16, the court was told.

The case was brought by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission.

In delivering the ruling, Judge Mark Horner said that there was no political will to change the law, and that current legislation was compounding the trauma experienced by victims of rape and incest.