To grasp the real meaning of the law on abortion in Northern Ireland, put out of mind the finger-jabbing abstractions of the Protestant politicians and the Catholic priests, and instead listen to the voices of the women who have lived with the practical consequences. This week they have been sharing their stories through the Guardian: tales of racking up debts to fund clinic fees in England, of lonely flights taken without the partner who should have been there to hold a hand, tales of seeking advice from doctors too fearful of prison to say anything useful, of sourcing illicit pills on the internet and fervently hoping that you’ve read the instructions right, and of the need to get your story straight before making a judgment about whether the bleeding has got to the point where A&E cannot be avoided.

Such terrible things are happening within the UK of 2016. One lesson is the sheer futility of presuming to second-guess the ethical and practical judgments that women make about their own wombs. However much a moralising lawmaker may wish to force a woman to carry on with a pregnancy she does not want, whatever obstacles he may put in the way of her taking control, he will often fail. When an unwanted pregnancy can warp a whole future, neither the travel costs nor the dangers of self-administered treatment will be a decisive deterrent, any more than the occasional horrors of the backstreet abortion prevented them happening back in Britain’s own Vera Drake days. The rest of the UK woke up to this reality half a century ago, with the Abortion Act of 1967. But such is the macho, sectarian politics of Northern Ireland that the province remains saddled with Victorian law, and indeed, in certain respects, the last few years have seen the regime of criminalisation become harsher.

A woman qualifies for an exceptional termination only where continuing with a pregnancy would render her a “physical or mental wreck”. As well as being shot through with misogyny, this anachronistic legal test is hopelessly ambiguous. And so it left doctors room, until a few years ago, to invoke maternal mental health in justifying the abortion of abnormal foetuses already fated not to survive. But after some alarmist noises from the attorney general, John Larkin – a man who once likened abortion of deformed foetuses to “putting a bullet in the back of the head of the child two days after it’s born” – the executive issued draft guidelines in 2013, which precluded any automatic exception for fatal foetal abnormalities, and also highlighted the legal threat hanging over practitioners giving advice. Although this was only draft policy, doctors were cowed, and the tiny number of abortions performed in the province dived in 2013-14. It was in this context, with the state effectively mandating women to go through with stillbirths, that a high court judge ruled in November that the near-blanket ban breached the Human Rights Act. It was, Mr Justice Horner explained, no use weighing the rights of the unborn child against the rights of the mother when that child was anyway doomed. It was not “unborn life” that was being protected, only the certainty of unborn death down the road.

The political will may, perhaps, be mustered to fix the specific problem of fatal foetal abnormalities. But even that is not guaranteed: Mr Larkin’s reaction to November’s ruling was to seek out grounds for appeal. Beyond that, the judgment may also move things along on rape cases, where the unspoken aim of some anti-abortionists, restricting female sexual autonomy, does not apply. But even as a female first minister takes up the reins, there are few hopes for any wider recasting of reproductive rights.

Several women who had an abortion relayed to the Guardian the burden of living with painful secrets, and the dread, or the experience, of having that secret betrayed. The concern of the old political order may very well be to lock this shame culture in place. In doing so, however, it brings nothing but shame on Northern Ireland.