Eamonn McCann: How parties are out of step with voters on abortion

Thursday, May 15, 2008

The DUP man was speaking as chairman of the Assembly 'pro-life' group about the possibility of the 1967 Abortion Act being extended to the North. The issue has arisen in the Westminster debate on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

The vast majority of the people of the North would be resolutely opposed to any such move, declared Mr Donaldson, drawing attention to the fact that Ian Paisley, Gerry Adams, Reg Empey and Mark Durkan, whose parties, between them, have the support of more than 90% of the electorate, had signed a joint letter warning Westminster against any attempt at extension.

On this, it seems, the four main party leaders stand rock solid and shoulder to shoulder: that it's only permissible to kill people after they've been born.

But there's another response to the prospect of the Abortion Act being applied to the North which also commands significant support. This is along the lines, "And about time, too."

How many take this latter view?

Women's groups from the Bogside to the Village support extension of the Act. So does the Family Planning Association. Likewise the Equality Commission and the NI Women's European Platform. Major trades unions agree, including the two biggest unions in Britain and Ireland, Unite and Unison. Nor is it the case, as anti-choice elements commonly suggest, that abortion policy is forced on Irish union members by British branches. In most cases, the policy has been endorsed by Irish or Northern Irish regional conferences. The biggest union locally, Nipsa, which organises only in the North, supports the extension of the Act.

This reflects a reality which is not represented in the politics of the Assembly.

Paisley, Adams, Empey and Durkan misrepresent the position when they give Westminster to believe that the people of the North are virtually unanimous in opposition to extension of the Act.

For the most part, people here still vote along confessional lines, for whichever party they reckon best represents the religion-defined community they come from. But the majority don't live their lives according to the principles or edicts of the religions concerned. More than half (58%) of all births in Belfast last year were to unmarried parents: more than three quarters of these registered the birth jointly. Even more tellingly, the Protestant and Catholic zealots who tried to thwart the introduction of civil partnerships failed to generate or sustain any credible campaign.

One of the reasons anti-choice campaigners shout ever more loudly from the rooftops is that they have begun to sense that, on this issue, too, they don't speak for as substantial a section of the population as they have long assumed. Northern people are more progressive in their approach to social issues than mainstream politicians dare acknowledge.

A 2004 survey in the South, carried out for the Crisis Pregnancy Agency by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the Economic and Social Research Institute, found that just over half of participants believed that a woman should always have the choice of abortion, 8% felt women should never have the choice, 2% had no opinion and the remaining 39% approved of abortion in some circumstances. As significant, perhaps, is that, last year, almost half of southern women surveyed said that they knew personally somebody who had had an abortion. Many who express themselves opposed to abortion in principle discover that they are for it in practice when confronted by a particular case — a daughter, a sister, a neighbour, a friend.

There is no reason to suppose tht the range of views in the North is significantly different to the spread in the South. In the North, in the end, it comes down not to religion but to money. The main effect of the exclusion of the North is that women who can't afford to travel are prevented from ending intolerable pregnancies.

The other major achievement of opponents of extension is that, because of the obstacle course they have to negotiate, Northern Irish women who have abortions are three times more likely than British women to have late abortions. Women here pay the same taxes as women across the water. Why should they have to go through such hassle in such fraught personal circumstances to find £700 or £800 to travel for a procedure which is freely available on the NHS in England, Scotland and Wales?

Northern Ireland GPs who have no conscientious objection to abortion are not allowed to refer women for legal abortions in another part of the same jurisdiction. What political or moral or common sense does this make?

Mo Mowlam was once asked by a Labour back-bencher why, when she'd voted as an Opposition MP for the extension of the Act, she refused to make any move on the issue now she'd become Secretary of State. The peace process was at a delicate stage, Mowlam replied: "We mustn't stir up the tribal elders."

The message then was the same as has come again from the tribal elders this week: women must wait.