Women in Northern Ireland lack reproductive rights
Posted by: Jenny Penny in Europe, Health, Human rights, Reproductive rights, Sex and sexualityIn Northern Ireland, four main political parties have managed to come together and actually agree on something. Unfortunately, it’s not on a good thing: they want to keep abortions extremely restricted. Today, women in Northern Ireland have no right to an abortion even if they are pregnant as a result of rape or incest. Abortion is only allowed in case of severe fetal abnormalities or a clear threat to the woman’s life. Some abortions are still done in Northern Ireland at the discretion of the doctor, but otherwise women are forced to go elsewhere in the UK or Europe to get the procedure and pay for it in private, which thousands also do. But this of course means that women without the financial resources (to obtain an abortion in the UK costs about £1,000) are left in an extremely difficult situation. It is reported that 11% of GPs in Northern Ireland have seen attempts by women to perform amateur abortions on themselves.
Now, there are attempts to extend the 1967 Abortion Act, so that it will finally apply to Northern Ireland as well. But the political parties the DUP, Sinn Féin, the UUP and the SDLP don’t want that, and for the first time they have overcome their political differences and agreed on a major issue: women in Northern Ireland should not have the same rights as women elsewhere in the United Kingdom.
Read Laura Canning’s column on this issue over at the Guardian’s “Comment is free”.
I don’t think I have any readers in the UK, but if you happen to be a British citizen and support equal reproductive rights for women in N.I., go to Pro-Choice Northern Ireland and learn what you can do.
(I guess this post means I’ve sunk even deeper into the “Culture of Death”. I am, however, in good company: read this great column by George Monbiot!).
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