Opinion

Newton Emerson: There may be trouble ahead on abortion

Newton Emerson
Newton Emerson Newton Emerson

THERE is under-appreciated potential for trouble in the secretary of state’s order to commission abortion services.

The key obstacle is Paul Givan. It is easy to forget, given his blokeish demeanour, that the DUP first minister is an evangelical conservative and one the most committed pro-life politicians at Stormont.

The mechanism by which Brandon Lewis has issued his orders involves telling Givan and Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill to put abortion services on the executive agenda.

Givan says he is taking legal advice on resisting this order. An option he has mentioned would be vetoing any proposals from the Department of Health, requiring Lewis to take him to court. A foot-dragging stand-off appears imminent.

The first place this could cause trouble is inside the DUP. Givan might be prepared to cause a Stormont crisis over abortion, especially while in a first minister’s chair he is only keeping warm for party leader Jeffrey Donaldson.

However, Donaldson definitely does not want devolution to collapse or freeze before he can return from Westminster. If abortion becomes an issue in that already tricky hand-over, it could re-open raw divides within the party.

All this will be going on, or at least having to be managed, alongside trouble inside the executive.

The veto available to first and deputy first ministers was uncontroversial until the DUP used it last November to block Covid restrictions.

This has made it as contentious as the petition of concern, ensuring extra drama if Givan plans to use it over abortion.

Unlike last November, the UUP may be on the DUP’s side.

Westminster passed a law in 2020 to legalise and regulate most forms of abortion here, in line with the UK’s treaty obligations to eliminate discrimination against women. It then passed a second law this year giving Lewis the power to order any minister, department or health official to commission abortion services.

The reason it had to pass the second law is primarily because UUP health minister Robin Swann would not implement the first and kept referring the matter upwards to the whole executive.

The Covid row pitched DUP ministers against everyone else, uniting everyone else in righteous cross-community indignation. A veto over abortion is likely to be unionists versus everyone else, which is toxic and divisive. This is what O’Neill means by abortion becoming “tribal”.

The third problem with Lewis’s orders is of them being disregarded not just by the DUP and the executive but within the healthcare system.

Many forms of abortion have been legally permissible for decades in Northern Ireland, yet women have been unable to access them.

Hospitals and GP practices have failed to provide services due to the personal beliefs of some staff, peer pressure felt among colleagues, lack of support from managers and justified fear of zealous police and prosecutors. Only the latter concern has been addressed by the 2020 law.

There is an interesting parallel with Edwin Poots’s resistance to commissioning sea border inspection posts. The DUP agriculture minister can obstruct development up to a point but he cannot depend on significant numbers of people defying orders through profound philosophical objections.

The lesson from Stormont’s last collapse is that voters will not thank parties for causing another one. An executive walk-out is improbable and in any case cannot cause a collapse after September, due to New Decade, New Approach reforms.

The deadline for enacting Lewis’s orders is next March, five weeks before the next scheduled assembly election. So unless Donaldson quashes any abortion stand-off, it will rumble on until then.

Nationalists may enjoy leaving unionism twisting in the wind. The electorate is fairly evenly split on abortion but becoming increasingly liberal, with unionists slightly more liberal than nationalists.

Unionists frustrated by the DUP will look to the UUP for a clear alternative under new leader Doug Beattie. They could be bitterly disappointed - Swann’s popularity from his handling of Covid makes him the UUP’s main electoral asset.

There is a constitutional irony in Lewis’s intervention, with unionists objecting to Westminster rule and nationalists welcoming it.

Officially, it is no breach of devolution for London to enforce UK treaty obligations, be that on abortion or Brexit. Unofficially, everyone knows Sinn Féin and the SDLP would be wailing about enforcement of anything they disliked - including abortion, which they objected to as firmly as Givan until three years ago.

Surveying this cynicism, a weary public could end up hoping Lewis’s override switch evolves into a more general Stormont mechanism. Perhaps it will.