Chai Brady
A decision that Northern Ireland’s abortion laws are best decided by Stormont has been described as “very welcome” by Pro-Life groups.
Three judges in the Court of Appeal ruled unanimously that the current abortion laws are not incompatible with the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), and that legislators should be tasked with dealing with the issue and not judges.
This overturns a 2015 High Court ruling, which found that preventing abortions related to sex crimes and unborn children diagnosed with severe disabilities was against the ECHR.
A ruling on the issue was said to undermine the separation of power between courts and legislature.
Significant
Tracy Harkin of the Iona Institute in Northern Ireland said: “This is a very welcome ruling and a significant defeat for the Human Rights Commission which was attempting to weaken the right to life of the unborn.
“There has been a long and concerted campaign to introduce permissive abortion legislation into Northern Ireland using very difficult and rare situations such as those tragic cases where a baby might not live long past birth.”
This comes as the British parliament decided that Northern Irish women can receive NHS funded abortions, which in turn has been called an “outrageous attack on democracy”.
The Director of Precious Life, Bernadette Smyth, said: “While Precious Life maintain that taxpayer’s money should not be used to pay for the killing of any unborn child, we reiterate even more so that taxpayer’s money should not be used to fund NHS abortions for women from Northern Ireland where abortion is a criminal offence.”