Victims of rape and incest will now be legally allowed to
carry out abortions in Northern Ireland after a landmark legal challenge to
relax the country’s strict laws proved successful.
Before the challenge, Northern Ireland was the only UK
country that didn’t take up the 1967 Abortion Act – meaning that terminations
were only legally permitted in instances where the life or mental health of the
mother was in danger.
Anyone who performed an illegal termination faced the
prospect of life imprisonment in jail.
But a challenge to the legal ruling was brought in July
by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commision (NIHRC) – who wanted to legalise
terminations in cases of rape, incest or fatal foetal abnormality.
Delivering the latest breakthrough ruling, Judge Mr
Justice Mark Horner told Belfast High Court: ‘In the circumstances, given this
issue is unlikely to be grasped by the legislature in the foreseeable future; I
conclude that the Article Eight [of the European Convention on Human Rights]
rights of women in Northern Ireland who are pregnant with foetal abnormalities
or as a result of sexual crime are breached by the impugned provisions.’
The judge also claimed that current Northern Irish law
placed a ‘disproportionate’ burden on the victims of sexual crime.
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