The UK is violating the rights of women in Northern Ireland by restricting their access to abortion, exposing them to “horrific situations”, a UN committee has said.

The committee on the elimination of discrimination against women (Cedaw) said thousands of women and girls in Northern Ireland faced “systematic violations of rights through being compelled to either travel outside Northern Ireland to procure a legal abortion or to carry their pregnancy to term”.

Officials from the committee conducted a confidential inquiry in Northern Ireland in 2016 and concluded that “the situation in Northern Ireland constitutes violence against women that may amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”, according to the Cedaw vice-chair Ruth Halperin-Kaddari.

“Denial of abortion and criminalisation of abortion amounts to discrimination against women because it is a denial of a service that only women need. And it puts women in horrific situations,” she said.

Women were subjected to further mental anguish when they were made to carry to term non-viable foetuses (foetuses with fatal abnormalities that were not going to survive) and when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

Forcing a woman to continue her pregnancy in this situation amounted to unjustified state-sanctioned violence, she said.

The 1967 Abortion Act was never extended to Northern Ireland, and abortion remains illegal in all but the most extreme circumstances. Northern Ireland has the harshest criminal penalty for abortion anywhere in Europe; in theory life imprisonment can be handed down to a woman undergoing an unlawful abortion.

The report recommends changing the law to stop criminal charges being brought against women and girls who have abortions and against anyone who assists them. It says abortion should be legal in the cases of rape, incest and cases of fatal foetal impairment.

Grainne Teggart of Amnesty International said the report made it clear that it was the UK’s responsibility to take urgent action.

“This damning report from the United Nations confirms what Amnesty has long said: Northern Ireland’s draconian abortion laws are a daily violation of the rights of women and girls,” she said.



“The UN committee is very clear that it is the UK government which is responsible for ensuring that our laws are in line with the state’s international human rights obligations.

“Devolution – even if functioning – does not relieve the UK government of its responsibility to uphold human rights in Northern Ireland. We call on the UK government to introduce abortion reform legislation at Westminster without any further delay.”

Health has been devolved to Northern Ireland for over a decade. In 2016 more than 700 women from Northern Ireland travelled to clinics in Britain to terminate pregnancies.

A woman is currently being prosecuted in Northern Ireland for helping her 15-year-old daughter procure abortion pills online after a doctor at a clinic where she had sought advice from her GP reported her to the police.

In 2016 a woman was prosecuted for taking abortion pills after her flatmates reported her to the police.