Northern Ireland Attorney General appeals court’s abortion ruling

26th January 2016

Northern Ireland’s Attorney General has announced his intention to challenge a Court of Appeal ruling which declared the region’s abortion laws too restrictive.

According to The Irish Times, the office of John Larkin QC has confirmed that an appeal to the ruling has been lodged.

Last December, Mr Justice Mark Horner heard a case brought by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) against the Department of Justice contending that the lack of access to abortion breaches women’s human rights. He ruled in favour of abortion in cases of rape, incest and those involving babies who will likely die at or soon after birth.

The December ruling did not have an immediate impact on the North’s abortion regime, which is currently unaffected by Britain’s 1967 Abortion Act, and only allows for abortion where there is an immediate threat to the physical or mental wellbeing of the mother. The ruling did, however, place pressure on Stormont to legislate on the issue.

At the same time, the ruling was seized upon by pro-abortion groups, such as Amnesty International in arguing for the introduction of abortion in the North. Amnesty is also currently lobbying for a repeal of the South’s constitutional protection for the unborn with its ‘Repeal the Eighth’ campaign.

Meanwhile, a landmark case on abortion in Peru has seen a woman receive compensation for the state’s failure to provide her with a termination when she learned that the infant she was carrying was suffering anencephaly. Peru normally allows for termination under such conditions.

Significantly, however, when the woman’s case was put to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 2005, that body ruled that several articles of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights had been breached and ordered financial compensation for the “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” suffered by the woman. That compensation has now been paid.

The case was the first in which the UN held a country accountable for failing to ensure access to abortion.