It looks as though British intervention, once again, will have to save the north’s leading political parties from their own cowardice. That’s ‘British’ as in Britain.
Access to early medical abortion over the past year inside Northern Ireland has happened thanks to hard work without a formal structure. The service keeps breaking down, because the Stormont Department of Health and minister for health refuse responsibility for it. Or as Robin Swann repeatedly puts it, apparently to write his stance into the record: ‘My department has not given instructions to commission abortion services.’
So who is it to be; secretary of state Brandon Lewis or the British parliament? Stormont won’t do it. Lewis could override them. Westminster could vote to censure a devolved administration that has obstructed a law by saying they have to discuss it’s ‘contentious’? Another Swann favourite, which he presents as though it’s explanation enough.
In some minds the minister wins understanding because he may be doing a reasonable job in the teeth of the pandemic. Not, though, from those who see him fobbing off questions from MLAs with the gumption to keep after him: chiefly the Green leader Clare Bailey, and Alliance’s Paula Bradshaw.
Though at least once, answering the exasperated Bailey last October on what were women to do as services collapsed in an entire area, Swann followed up his disclaimer with: ‘However, abortion is legal and can be carried out by registered medical professionals.’ Not, however, through any service commissioned by him and his department. Because he has had to refer it for executive discussion because it’s contentious. And then? It seems the executive just cannot find the words to put a contentious issue on their agenda.
Some unionist politicians complain loudly now that by interrupting trade to and from Britain the Brexit they demanded threatens their Britishness. But they themselves deny women here a health service the British parliament specifically voted into being. Westminster changed the law because DUP-dominated Stormont would not. Theirs is Ulster Britishness, traditional, reactionary.
Then there is the notional progressiveness of today’s Irish republicanism. ‘The North is next’, said the huge poster beside a beaming Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill, among the cheering crowds at Dublin Castle to welcome the landslide vote that brought in Irish legal abortion. In May 2018. ‘Next’ has yet to arrive. Without a dissenting cheep from O’Neill in Stormont, as far as is known. Maybe there are weekly SF/DUP battles on the subject. No leaks, if so.
Votes to enable legal abortion and same-sex marriage came on the same day in July 2019, when Westminster did what Stormont as dominated by the DUP would not do. Gay marriage eventually made it across the sea, but not abortion. Instead of falling into line at last with British practice and taking their lead from the Mother of Parliaments, political unionism looked to their backwoods and their own prejudices.
First minister and DUP leader Arlene Foster was explicit early on; let Westminster vote how they would, it would not happen on her watch. With total assistance from Ulster Unionists, the DUP would stall and minimise safe, legal abortion for as long as possible.
A week ago the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission announced that as a last resort, after seeking to engage with the executive and the Department of Health, they are taking legal action. Against health minister Swann but also against the department he supposedly heads and secretary of state Lewis; for failing to commission and fund abortion services.
Chief Commissioner Les Allamby called it ‘Kafkaesque’ that the NIO claimed it was taking all reasonable steps to enable a service, the Department of Health said it could not get agreement to commission and fund a service through the executive, and the executive said it was a matter for the DoH.
If Sinn Féin has commented, this writer has missed it. (Anything on it from the SDLP? Now that would be a breakthrough.)
