Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Northern Ireland’s pro-choice lobby couldn’t care less about democracy

Well, the High Court in Belfast has driven a coach and horses through Northern Ireland’s abortion law. The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) sought a ruling to allow women to have abortions in local hospitals in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities, rape and incest; today, it got it. This judgment is plainly at odds with the opinion of the democratic forum in the north, the Northern Ireland Assembly, where every attempt to have abortion introduced upfront, in law, has been thrown out. Instead abortion seems likely to be brought in through the courts, that weaselly, undemocratic method of choice by the human rights lobby, whose concept of human rights never seems to extend to prenatal life. (Plus, I should very much like to know how much of its funding comes from the US: answers, please, whenever you like.)

And I can’t quite see that you can satisfactorily establish the fact of rape, or possibly incest, within the constraints of gestation.

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