May’s abortion reform test

There must have been few women in Britain who didn’t applaud the vote in Ireland on Saturday to liberalise abortion laws. The referendum to overturn the Republic’s eighth amendment – which allowed abortion only when a woman’s life was at risk but not in cases of rape, incest or fatal foetal abnormality – had brought expats home from all corners of the globe, in the absence of postal votes, to change history.

Theresa May was among those congratulating the winning side, describing the result as an ‘impressive show of democracy’.

Like most British women, she no doubt found it difficult to comprehend an otherwise modern state reverting to medieval barbarity and forcing an estimated 170,000 of its female citizens to travel across the Irish Sea to have abortions.

Perhaps even more shocking in the wake of the Irish campaign was the reminder that Northern Ireland, part of the UK, also bans abortion, except to save the mother’s life. To the relatively secular societies of England, Scotland and Wales, the dictates of the religious lobby in Northern Ireland are an abomination and out of step with the rest of the West.

Women on the left and right at Westminster are now urging May to call a referendum in Belfast so that Northern Irish women, too, can have the right to choose.

So far, she has refused, and with very good reason. However strongly we feel about Northern Ireland’s antiquated legislation, the province has a devolved administration, just as Scotland and Wales do, and abortion laws are a matter for Stormont, the regional assembly.

The fact that this body has not sat for more than a year because the DUP and Sinn Fein, its main political parties, are unable to agree on a power-sharing deal complicates the issue – but that doesn’t give MPs an excuse to wade in.

Several of May’s colleagues, including Education Minister Anne Milton, and former ministers Amber Rudd, Nicky Morgan, Justine Greening and Maria Miller, think she should intervene.

Labour, meanwhile, has said it is looking at ‘legislative options’ in Westminster to change the Northern Ireland abortion law.

All seem to agree that the prime minister must either introduce reform in the Commons and give MPs a free vote, or impose a plebiscite on Northern Ireland.

This would surely find backing among many Ulster voters, but that still makes it wrong. The leaders of the DUP and Sinn Fein might need their heads knocked together for their failure over the past year to govern themselves.

And it’s fair to say they don’t deserve devolution if they can’t find a way to make it work. But that doesn’t alter the fact that they have devolution.

Imagine how our devolved regime in Scotland would react if a Tory government in London rode roughshod over Northern Ireland’s home rule act. It would be a gift to the Scottish Nationalists, providing concrete proof of Westminster’s tendency to power grab.

And what confusion would reign if May ordered a ballot over abortion in Northern Ireland but refused one on independence north of the border.

The principles of the constitution aside, she cannot, of course, afford to risk upsetting the DUP leader, Arlene Foster. Since last year’s general election, the weakened Conservatives have depended on the Ulster Unionists. Now, with Brexit ongoing, May needs their votes more than ever.

The DUP is pro-life, although Sinn Fein apparently backs a change in the law, and Foster has made it clear she will not be told by Downing Street, or anyone else, how she should react to the Dublin vote.

“It is an extremely sensitive issue and not one that should have people taking to the streets in celebration,” she said.

This may be a minority view in the British Isles but it is hardly a surprising one from the DUP. So it is foolish of May’s colleagues, and cynical of the Labour opposition, to demand action that could jeopardise the fragile alliance between the Tories and the Ulster MPs.

Shami Chakrabarti, the former director of Liberty and now one of Jeremy Corbyn’s closest allies, was on TV wringing her hands at the awfulness of Northern Ireland’s rules on abortion.

This is the woman who Corbyn employed to whitewash over charges of anti-Semitism in Labour (for which, it is alleged, she accepted a peerage as payment) and, incidentally, one of those icons of the Left who oppose private education, except in the case of her son.

Her liberal credentials are not what they were. The likes of Chakrabarti want May to antagonise the DUP in order to bring down the government and make way for Corbyn. That much is obvious. But is that what her own party wants too?

Theresa May has resisted calls for a referendum on abortion in Belfast so that Northern Irish women, too, can have the right to choose.