Sir, – Pat Leahy's excellent political analysis of the NI Assembly's Abortion Amendment Bill ("Sinn Féin fudge on abortion Bill part of its path onwards", Analysis, March 20th) stopped short of a more detailed legal explanation of the Bill.
This Bill deals with a discrete aspect of the current abortion regulations, imposed by Westminster. The provision, which this Bill attempts to address, is regulation 7 (1) (b), which egregiously permits abortion up to term, in cases of “severe foetal impairment where if the baby were born, it would suffer from such physical or mental impairment as to be seriously disabled”.
Leaving aside the inhumane nature of regulation 7, which permits abortion right up to birth, there are other compelling human rights reasons under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for removing this provision. As the late Lord Justice Brian Kerr (former NI chief justice) highlighted in his non- binding judgment in the 2018 UK Supreme Court case on abortion law in Northern Ireland, the Assembly is forbidden by the Northern Ireland Act 1998 to make laws contrary to the UN Convention on the Disabled. The same convention applies in the Republic. Lord Kerr went on to say: “The UN Convention is based on the premise that if abortion is permissible, there should be no discrimination on the basis that the foetus, because of a defect, will result in a child being born with a physical, or mental disability.”
Lord Kerr also pointedly referred to the UN committee that monitors compliance with the UN Convention and “their consistent criticism of any measure which provided for abortion in a way that distinguishes between the unborn on the basis of physical or mental disability”.
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The UN committee has continued to be critical of current abortion law in Britain as it applies to unborn disabled child. This monitoring committee has recommended that the UK’s laws on abortion be amended, “without legalising selective abortion on the grounds of foetal deficiency”. Therefore, there is little doubt that regulation 7 is incompatible with the UN Convention, which is judiciable under NI domestic law.
MPs both here and in Britain, were warned at the time of the passage of the Westminster legislation about this potential incompatibility with international human rights law. It is good to note that this human rights-proofed Bill was supported overwhelmingly by the NI Assembly. – Yours, etc,
ALBAN MAGINNESS,
(SDLP),
Belfast.