Nuala O’Loan
The View
The world is a very strange place today. Whereas a couple of weeks ago we were focused almost entirely on Brexit, wondering how everything would work out, today, it seems to me we are in an entirely different world. Outwardly it looks the same; but it is utterly changed.
Now we are becoming paralysed by the fear of this new coronavirus, Covid-19. It is something which we cannot see, cannot hear, cannot feel. We may not know when it has touched us and we have been infected until we become ill, and all that time we will be capable of infecting others. We now recognise an invisible enemy, against which we have no defence. If we get it, we must suffer its symptoms until they pass; for some of us it will become a fight for life, and already people are losing that fight.
How did it happen? How did it happen so quickly and what can we do? This faceless, odourless, invisible enemy has already stopped us in our tracks. The world is struggling to create a vaccine, a suitable antiviral drug, and to keep its factories open, its supply chains moving and its people fed.
The answer we are told is isolation – if we are not in contact with those who carry the virus, we will not get it. It is all very alarming and in some places it must be terrifying. In the diocese of Bergamo alone, in Italy, many people have died, among them six priests; 20 priests are in hospital fighting the condition, men who went out among their sick parishioners.
Responsibility
We have much to do to keep ourselves healthy so that we can look after those for whom we have responsibility and those who have no one to look after them. Prolonged isolation seems to be being recommended for the elderly, yet we are by nature social, convivial creatures. Loneliness will be the consequence of isolation, and loneliness can be very, very hard to endure. It will be critical that we all do all we can. Above all, we must pray for healing, for grace, for generosity and compassion at this terrible time.
The NHS, which cannot cope with all the demands already made on it, will not be able to cope with abortion on top of coronavirus”
While all this is going on, while we are trying to equip ourselves for an uncertain future, other things are happening in Northern Ireland (NI): things which, I think, people hardly know: matters, too, of life and death. Inside the next week or so the UK Government will table new abortion law for NI. The preparation of this law, following the flawed consultation which suggested grounds for abortion way beyond those required by the Act passed by Parliament in July, has been a very strange and secretive process.
Government has seen the results of the consultation. It has even responded to it. No one else has seen either the results or the Government response.
The Northern Ireland Executive has not been consulted about the provisions of the new law, nor has the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Justice, Peter May, said recently: “No-one has seen any of the proposals which are being brought forward.” Nobody has, as is normal, shared draft regulations with stakeholders for comment. Nobody knows exactly what it is going to say. Why? We understand it has been referred to a committee in Parliament, but still we, and I as a member of the House of Lords, do not know what it says.
It seems likely that we will be presented with abortion on demand up to 12 or 14 weeks, abortion up to 22 or 24 weeks where the physical or mental health of the woman, her existing children or her family would be adversely affected if the pregnancy continued, and abortion up to birth if the baby has a disability.
Such a law would go way beyond what is permitted in England and Wales or in Ireland.
In addition to this the consultation indicates that other medical professionals will be able to carry out abortions and that there will be no requirement for a registered doctor to be present. Such a law would also go far beyond what was required by the Act passed at Westminster last summer.
The law will come into force when it is tabled in Parliament. No vote will be necessary. No change can be made to that Law once tabled. It could be “prayed against” in an attempt to reject it completely. It is unlikely at this stage that the Westminster Parliament would reject the whole new abortion law.
It is as if the newly-returned NI Assembly did not exist. Yet the NI Assembly and especially Minister Robin Swann will have to provide the whole abortion service.
There has been no impact assessment, no preparation (because nobody knows what is coming), no training of staff, no allocation of ringfenced budget to pay for the anticipated 1,000 new procedures a year: procedures for which the NHS in England and Wales pays private providers between £400 and £600 a time. So, a budget of some £500,000 should be allocated. I have not seen any sign of any budget allocation.
All this is happening in a health service described just two months ago by striking nurses as ‘broken’. It is happening at a time when Covid-19 is affecting thousands across the country, when it is known that we do not have the resources and staff to provide treatment for all who may be affected. In Italy doctors are already choosing who to treat because they cannot treat everyone. There is a terrible fear that that will happen in NI.
The UK Government can only seek to fight Covid-19, to try to stem the loss of life and to heal those who suffer.
The doctors, nurses, physios, pharmacists will, I am sure, give their all to the fight against the virus. They will do this in the context of a health service which was broken before the coronavirus struck, which could not even then, provide surgery and medical care for all its people.
The NHS, which cannot cope with all the demands already made on it, will not be able to cope with abortion on top of coronavirus, and there is a terrible irony, at a time when the medical and nursing professions are struggling to preserve life, that government should be set on inflicting on us legislation designed to end the life of unborn babies; legislation against which the people of Northern Ireland have campaigned, protested and fought in their tens of thousands.