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Campaigners for abortion rights in Northern Ireland are to travel to Westminster on Wednesday to lobby MPs.

A total of 40 women from across the community will meet MPs to call for an extension of more permissive English legislation to the province.

The four largest local political parties have warned against introducing the 1967 Abortion Act in Northern Ireland.

Alliance for Choice spokeswoman Goretti Horgan said: “Each year thousands of Northern Irish women travel to Britain and Europe and pay for private abortions.

“For women living on low incomes, getting the money together on time is impossible.

“An unwanted pregnancy can leave some women in a desperate situation, which is why we now find some women turning to the internet to buy the abortion pill.”

Among the 40 Alliance for Choice representatives will be Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) MLA Dawn Purvis. They will be at Parliament with Baroness May Blood from the Shankill Road.

Campaigners will meet Labour MP Diane Abbott, who tabled an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill calling for the extension of the Abortion Act to Northern Ireland.

The effect of the amendment would have been to give women in Northern Ireland exactly the same rights to abortion with NHS funding that women elsewhere in Britain have.

Ms Horgan added: “The time it takes some women to find enough money to have an abortion means that women from here are three times more likely than British women to have abortions after 20 weeks.

“However, thousands of others are forced to continue pregnancies they find intolerable. This includes women pregnant as a result of rape and sexual abuse.”

Former DUP leader the Rev Ian Paisley has argued that Stormont was the correct place to deal with abortion in Northern Ireland.

His opposition to change has been supported by the UUP, SDLP and Sinn Fein.