The Supreme Court says women’s human rights are being breached in Northern Ireland – if Theresa May doesn’t act, her legacy will be in tatters

As the Labour MP Stella Creasy stated, 'is the government really going to force a rape victim to come and give evidence in open court to change the law?'

This morning, the UK’s Supreme Court dismissed the Northern Irish Human Rights Commission (NIHRC)’s appeal to overturn Northern Ireland’s strict abortion laws. While the Supreme Court judges agreed that Northern Ireland’s laws are incompatible with human rights in the cases of rape, incest and fatal foetal abnormality, the appeal was rejected due to a technicality. By the narrow majority of four to three judges, the Court ruled that they had no jurisdiction because there was no actual or potential victim of an unlawful act involved in the case.

The ruling that there is no actual or potential victim leading to dismissal is an absurd technicality. Every day, three Northern Irish women travel to mainland Britain to have an abortion or take illegal and often unsafe abortion pills. In 2016, a Northern Irish woman was prosecuted for buying abortion pills for her daughter and was reported by her GP. In the same year, a 21-year-old woman was arrested for using poison to induce her own abortion. She was reported to the police by her flatmates.

Women in Northern Ireland are continually forced to travel or risk imprisonment to terminate pregnancies, a humiliating and traumatic experience. While the Supreme Court’s ruling that there are no victims is a technicality, it reads like a cruel joke. As Labour MP, Stella Creasy stated, “is the government really going to force a rape victim to come and give evidence in open court to change the law?”

Yet, despite the appeal being overturned, the Supreme Court’s ruling has shown that Westminster and Theresa May can no longer dismiss Northern Ireland’s abortion laws as a devolved matter. It’s been over a year since Northern Ireland’s devolved government collapsed due to DUP and Sinn Fein power-sharing disagreements. With no government, Westminster has a duty to speak up for Northern Ireland and the country’s human rights issues.

The UN has repeatedly stated that the UK is violating human rights due to Northern Ireland’s laws. Westminster now has a national and moral obligation to decriminalise abortion laws in Northern Ireland under international law.

After the Irish referendum’s landslide vote to repeal the Republic’s abortion laws, Northern Irish pro-choice campaigners have since increased pressure on British MPs to speak up against Northern Ireland’s laws. The abortion debate that took place in Westminster earlier in the week was brought forward by a cross-party group of MPs and was a clear sign to May and Conservatives that they need to make a decision.

The Supreme Court’s ruling is both a disappointment and a confirmation of what we already knew. While the appeal has been dismissed, its ruling has proven that Northern Ireland, and the UK by extension, is breaching the European Convention of Human Rights. The government cannot ignore today’s verdict and May will have to decide whether she cares more about women’s rights or keeping favour with the DUP.

As one of the justices, Lord Kerr stated in today’s ruling, under current laws, “[Northern Irish women] are forbidden to do to their own bodies that which they wish to do; they are prevented from arranging their lives in the way that they want; they are denied the chance to shape their future as they desire. If, as well as the curtailment on their autonomy which this involves, they are carrying a foetus with a fatal abnormality or have been the victims of rape or incest, they are condemned, because legislation enacted in another era has decreed it, to endure untold suffering and desolation. What is that, if it is not humiliation and debasement?”

Let’s hope this is the final hurdle for decriminalising Northern Ireland’s cruel and inhumane abortion laws.