May urged to scrap Ulster’s ban on abortion

LABOUR’S shadow attorney general yesterday demanded Theresa May overhaul Ulster’s abortion laws without holding a referendum – to prove she is a feminist.

Shami Chakrabarti suggested human rights should come before democracy as she called on the Prime Minister to make abortion legal in the province.

But Tories accused Labour of trying to sabotage Brexit by driving a wedge between Mrs May and her DUP allies, whose Commons votes she relies on.

Labour yesterday stepped up its calls for Mrs May to intervene in Northern Ireland in the wake of Friday’s vote to make abortion legal in the Republic.

The referendum south of the border leaves Ulster as the only part of the British Isles where it is illegal to have a termination.

Downing Street says it is a decision for the Stormont Assembly, but it has been suspended for the past 18 months following the collapse of the power-sharing deal between the DUP and Sinn Fein.

Baroness Chakrabarti argued that in the absence of the assembly, Mrs May should impose a change in the law from Westminster.

The former human rights campaigner told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘We are calling on Mrs May, a selfidentifying feminist, to negotiate with the parties in Northern Ireland and then to legislate without further delay.’

A UN committee earlier this year claimed the UK was violating the rights of women in Northern Ireland by restricting their access to abortion. Northern Ireland’s devolved assembly voted against liberalising abortion laws in February 2016.

Tory MP Nadine Dorries yesterday said the issue was being used to ‘create mischief’.

‘Legislate without further delay’