Currently, 28 women a week are forced to travel from Northern Ireland to England for abortions (Picture: Alex Cavendish/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The fight for equality isn’t that complicated. It’s about ensuring each of us have the same rights and then acting to protect this principle if it is challenged.

But what seems simple in principle can often be complicated by practice – or in this case, politics, as the people of Northern Ireland know all too well.

Currently, 28 women a week are forced to travel from Northern Ireland to England for abortions. This journey to access basic healthcare is something our own human rights court has called ‘cruel and inhumane’.

It’s caused by the imposition of a law from Westminster, written over 150 years ago, that makes having an abortion illegal. Thus, if you are raped in Northern Ireland, become pregnant as a result, and seek a termination, you could face a longer prison sentence than your attacker.




It’s not just women in Northern Ireland whose reproductive rights are denied. Same sex marriage is not legal either – 84 couples in Northern Ireland had a civil partnership in 2016, denied the same marriage rights as their heterosexual counterparts.

Laws stuck in the past tell gay people that their relationship should neither be seen nor heard – something no one else would accept, and neither should they.

Devolution cannot be used as an excuse to ignore these concerns, nor for the Secretary of State to avoid them.

The Prime Minister agrees that both abortion and gay rights should be equal for all UK Citizens but says it is up to the Northern Ireland Assembly to act.

Yet, this week, an emergency bill – The Northern Ireland Bill – is being rushed through parliament in order to give civil servants the powers to run departments there because the Assembly isn’t functioning. In among this mess, responsibility for addressing the incompatibility of this current situation with our human rights obligations sits in limbo.

Polls in Northern Ireland consistently show the public want change on both issues – they also back the UK parliament acting in the absence of the Assembly itself.

Yet instead of listening to them, politicians stubbornly hold back change, with the DUP demanding that Theresa May does not act as a condition of their partnership with her in Westminster.

That’s why Conor Mcginn and I have tabled amendments to this emergency legislation, to hold the Secretary of State to account for this mess and the Government’s failure to uphold the human rights of the people of Northern Ireland.

Twenty years ago, both the UK and Irish governments committed to doing that through the Good Friday Agreement – for this to mean anything, we cannot ignore these matters any longer.

Banning safe and legal abortion in Northern Ireland doesn’t prevent abortions, it just puts women at risk because they take pills bought online instead or have to find the money to travel.

Just as not having equal marriage doesn’t stop people falling in love – it just demeans all of us as we treat those who love someone of the same gender as second class citizens.

Theresa May has always said these are issues of conscience; that MPs should have a free vote on such matters.

It should indeed be on the conscience of every UK MP that, due to laws written in Westminster, citizens in Northern Ireland face human rights restrictions.

Devolution cannot be used as an excuse to ignore these concerns, nor for the Secretary of State to avoid them.



So far, nearly 80 MPs from across Conservative, Lib Dem, Labour, Green and Plaid Cymru have put their name to this amendment to show they will not forget the people of Northern Ireland.

The answer to the call from so many there as to when will they be treated equally cannot be ‘when it suits the DUP’. The answer Westminster needs to give is now.

So whatever opponents say, this isn’t that complicated – it’s just the right thing to do.

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