Northern pro-lifers are determined to make the protection of unborn children a key issue in the North’s coming election.
Northern Secretary James Brokenshire announced elections for a new Assembly on March 2, following the collapse of the Executive after the resignation of Martin McGuinness as Deputy First Minister and the refusal of Sinn Féin to nominate a replacement Deputy First Minister. The last elections in the North took place in May.
The nationalist party’s refusal to nominate a fresh Deputy First Minister came after the ‘cash for ash’ scandal in which the DUP leader refused to accept responsibility for a renewable heat scheme that cost Northern taxpayers over €450 million, as well as a succession of disagreements between the North’s two main parties.
Moral values
“In the pro-life movement we have prepared a pro-life campaign to ensure that we re-elect politicians because they are pro-life,” Bernadette Smyth of Precious Life told The Irish Catholic. “The election will be for the moral values the people of Northern Ireland have continued to uphold for generations.”
The new election will see politicians competing for just 90 seats, instead of the current 108.
This could see smaller parties such as the Alliance struggling, she said, speculating on how this might affect attempts to prevent the legalisation of abortion in the North, with some in Sinn Féin keen to abolish petitions of concern, a constitutional mechanism signed by at least 30 MLAs that requires votes to have cross-community support.
Pro-lifers have hoped the DUP could use this as a blocking mechanism to prevent the legalisation of abortion.
Mrs Smyth predicted that there could be “a real battleground” around the Sinn Féin desire to have the mechanism abolished.
“Sinn Féin is very keen to have the law changed on abortion, and liberal issues like so-called marriage equality,” she said, continuing, “Their concern is that that could be blocked by the DUP so that could cause a battle.”
Protection
“It’s looking very likely that the battleground we face now is a battle for the moral values of equality, the upholding of the protection of the right to life, and for Christian marriage to be respected and upheld here in Northern Ireland,” she said.