Later today the campaign for the extension of the British 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland will take a significant step forward when a British Labour MP asks the Secretary of State, Dr Mo Mowlam, for clarification of the abortion laws in the North. Among those recommending its extension is Viscount Craigavon, grandson of James Craig, founder of Northern Ireland and its first prime minister.
Ms Maria Fyfe, MP for Glasgow Maryhill, will put her questions in the Commons just three weeks after the Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr Patrick Walsh, called on the North's 18 Westminster MPs for assurances that they would not seek the extension of the 1967 Act to the North.
Though power to legislate on abortion in Northern Ireland will not be devolved to the new Assembly, the Act could be extended to the North if a Northern MP were to propose it in the Commons.
Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK where abortion is not available under the 1967 Act. Though abortion is technically legal there, the vast majority of women wishing to terminate their pregnancy must travel to Britain.
The lack of clarity on the law is such that a 1993 British government committee concluded: "The law is so unclear it violates the common standards of international human rights."
Last month an all-party group in Westminster, on which Viscount Craigavon sits, called on "the UK government to . . . take measures to deal with the anomaly of the denial of the right to legal abortion to the women of Northern Ireland", provoking fury among anti-abortion campaigners.
Ms Betty Gibson, leader of Northern Ireland's Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, told The Irish Times: "Our doctors are quite clear on the situation. We have distributed over 30,000 leaflets over the past three months on the situation and telling Tony Blair to leave our abortion laws alone."
Currently the abortion laws remain governed by the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act and the 1929 Infant Life (Preservation) Act. This prohibits the abortion of an unborn child which could live (understood broadly as 28 weeks or more since conception) unless to preserve the life of the mother.
Ms Audrey Simpson, director of the Belfast Family Planning Association, said this does not make clear whether an abortion could be carried out on a woman pregnant less than 28 weeks.
In Britain the inconsistencies and confusion led to the 1967 Abortion Act. It was not applied to Northern Ireland, which had its own parliament.
The North's Department of Health said: "It has generally been accepted that abortion is lawful where necessary to save the life of the mother; or where continuation of the pregnancy would involve risk of serious injury to her physical or mental health."
It is up to an individual's doctor to decide whether she should have an abortion.
Ms Fyfe will ask Dr Mowlam whether the medical grounds for abortion extend to foetal abnormality and rape, incest or sexual assault and whether there is any plan to issue guidelines "to Northern Ireland's GPs, obstetricians and gynaecologists . . . on the grounds under which termination of pregnancy may be carried out".
The Department of Health's 1996-97 figures show that there were 85 "medical", eight "other" and 77 "unspecified" abortions recorded, while an average of 1,600 to 1,800 women travel to Britain each year for an abortion.
Ms Helen Harris, of the Derry-based Alliance For Choice, says travel makes abortion more expensive and that "women from here are more likely to have their abortions later than women in the rest of the UK. Over 19 per cent of women from Northern Ireland having abortions in England in 1997 were over 12 weeks pregnant, almost double the proportion of British women."
The North's political parties generally do not campaign on abortion at all.
Of the 10 parties to the Belfast Agreement only two, the PUP and the UDP, have policies supporting extension of the 1967 Act. The Alliance Party says it has no whip on the matter. Sinn Fein and the Women's Coalition have indicated that they would not oppose extension. The UK Unionist Party will not seek its extension. Both the UUP and the SDLP strongly oppose extension, while the Rev Ian Paisley's DUP is opposed to abortion in any circumstance.
As a result of the British government's investigation in 1993, the committee made three recommendations: that statistics should be kept on spontaneous and induced abortions; that options should be brought forward for a clearer law; and that the issue of a woman's ability to pay for an abortion should be removed from the debate.
Statistics are now being kept, although what exactly is meant by "medical", "other", and "unspecified" abortions is not spelt out. Northern Ireland remains alone in Europe in having had no public debate on its abortion laws in the past 25 years.