It is now the only place in either the UK or Ireland to ban terminations in almost all circumstances

ALTHOUGH the people of Ireland voted to overturn the country’s ban on abortion on May 25th, in one part of the island the restrictions continue. In Northern Ireland, unlike the rest of the United Kingdom, abortion has never been legal except in the rarest of circumstances.

Within days of the Irish referendum, Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Northern Ireland’s largest party, declared that the result would have no impact on the law in her part of the world. But it quickly became clear that although she was legally correct, she could be politically mistaken. Campaigners in Dublin jubilantly brandished signs promising “the north is next”. In Belfast, activists predicted a “seismic wave” of support for the north to follow suit.

The issue goes well beyond medical and moral matters. In Westminster, the DUP made a pact last year with the ruling Conservative Party, lending it the votes of its ten MPs in return for £1bn ($1.3bn) of extra money for Northern Ireland. Those votes are the only thing keeping Theresa May’s government in office. Following the Irish referendum, senior figures in the Tory party, as well as the opposition, are pushing for abortion reform in Northern Ireland. Yet the DUP, a socially conservative Protestant outfit, is vehemently against.

The prospect of a vote on the matter in the House of Commons has alarmed the DUP. For years it has successfully defeated motions in the Northern Ireland Assembly proposing abortion reform. But whereas it has what amounts to a veto in the Assembly, it has no such control in the Commons. Its fundamentalist Protestant base would be angered if it failed to stop abortion in Northern Ireland.

Never a party noted for subtlety, it has already issued a blunt warning that Mrs May “would regret” allowing Tory MPs a free vote. The DUP’s pact with the Tories does not mention abortion. But the DUP has made it known that it sees the issue as a deal-breaker. The party’s chairman, Lord Morrow, declared: “Why would [Mrs May] risk losing the support of the DUP? She would not be foolish enough to do that.”

The British government argues that the abortion question is, in the first instance, a matter for the Northern Ireland Assembly. That is true, but ignores the fact that the Assembly has been suspended since January 2017, after an almighty falling out between the DUP and Sinn Fein, the biggest nationalist party, with which it is obliged to share power. The Assembly can be revived only if the two parties agree to work together again, and there is no sign of that on the horizon.

This has led to calls in Westminster for the British government to step in. Dawn Butler, the shadow minister for women, decried the “injustice” of Northern Irish women being denied access to safe and legal abortion. “We should not be relying on a Victorian law. It is time for change,” said Lord Duncan, a Conservative peer who serves as parliamentary undersecretary for Northern Ireland.

Would Northern Irish voters embrace such a change? Attitudes have been getting increasingly liberal. Polls find that they strongly support extending the right to abortion to cover cases of rape, incest or fetal abnormality. But an official survey in 2016 found a majority against the right to abortion on demand, of the sort that Ireland has just endorsed.

Even without reform in the north, the DUP and other pro-life campaigners worry that Ireland’s decision will increase the number of abortions sought by Northern Irish women. Leo Varadkar, the Irish taoiseach, has indicated that they may well be allowed to cross the border to have abortions in the south. For many years Irish women went to Britain to terminate their pregnancies. It may not be long before British citizens are travelling from Northern Ireland to the south for the same reason.