This article was updated July 19.
MANCHESTER, England — Abortion and same-sex marriage will be made
legal in Northern Ireland unless self-government in the province is restored
within three months.
The House of Lords in London voted 182-37 in favor of permitting
abortions for Northern Irish women up to 28 weeks of pregnancy.
The July 17 vote came just two weeks after the House of Commons
voted overwhelmingly in favor of an amendment to the Northern Ireland
(Executive Formation) Bill to permit both abortion and same-sex marriage in the
province. The House passed the amendments July 18.
Both changes are subject to the restoration of legislative powers
that were devolved — passed down from the British Parliament in London — to the
Northern Ireland assembly at Stormont in Belfast by Oct. 21.
Power-sharing at Stormont between Irish Nationalist and Loyalist
factions, which originated from the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, collapsed in
2017, and there are few signs that it will be restored in the near future.
The changes to abortion law are controversial because all of the
U.K. Members of Parliament who hold seats in Northern Ireland are opposed to
abortion.
The Stormont assembly also rejected abortion when it had the
opportunity to vote for its introduction in 2016.
Northern Ireland is the only part of the U.K. — and one of the few
places within Europe — where doctors can be prosecuted for providing abortions.
Ahead of the passage of the bill through the Houses of
Parliament, Auxiliary Bishop John Sherrington of Westminster, the lead bishop
on pro-life issues of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, urged
politicians to heed the wishes of the majority of the people of Northern
Ireland who, he said, "have not been consulted on such a fundamental
change to the law."
"Decision-making should take place as close to the people as
possible," he said in a July 12 statement sent by email to Catholic News
Service.
"In contrast, this proposal is an imposition enacted by a
Parliament which is overwhelmingly not from Northern Ireland," the bishop
added. "Parliament acting in this way threatens further to undermine
devolution in Northern Ireland."
Clare McCarthy of Right to Life U.K., a lobby group, said:
"The people of Northern Ireland have 13 weeks to stop the introduction of
one of the world's most extreme abortion regimes to the province.
"Many thousands of people in Northern Ireland are deeply
angered and distressed by this action by the Westminster Parliament," she
said in a July 18 statement sent by email to CNS.
"The manner in which MPs from Westminster have attempted to
impose abortion on a people that do not want it, and who they do not represent,
is grossly disrespectful and unconstitutional," she said.
A letter with about 19,000 signatures from people of Northern
Ireland was sent to outgoing U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May after her
government indicated that it was dropping its policy of neutrality on abortion
in the province in favor of actively pursuing a change in the law.
The letter, drafted by Baroness (Nuala) O'Loan, a Northern Irish
member of the House of Lords, urged May not to permit legal abortion until the
people of Northern Ireland had been consulted and their elected representative
assented to a change in the law.
But Lord (Ian) Duncan, speaking for the U.K. government during
the Lords debate, said abortion would be introduced irrespective of any
consultation.
He said he wished to confirm that the "substantive
point" of any future consultation would focus on "how women will
obtain access to abortion, but not whether they should be able to do so."
"I want to be absolutely clear, consultation would not be on
the question of whether this should be done but only how the recommendations
can be implemented in Northern Ireland," he said.