Abortion Bill unlikely to succeed, says No 10
A Bill aiming to modernise abortion law is unlikely to win the Government support it needs to become law, Downing Street has indicated.
Labour MP Diana Johnson won support for her Abortion Bill by a majority of 85 MPs, including Conservative ministers. But Downing Street indicated that the Bill would not be given the Government support it would need to have any realistic chance of becoming law.
Theresa May’s official spokesman said: “The Prime Minister has consistently said that abortion has always been a devolved matter for the Northern Ireland Executive and the best way forward is that this issue should be decided by locally accountable politicians in the Northern Ireland Assembly.”
Earlier Hull North MP Ms Johnson stressed how Northern Ireland’s 157-year-old laws are “one of the harshest abortion regimes in the world”, without recourse to abortion even in cases of rape, incest or fatal foetal abnormality.
Northern Ireland is still ruled by an 1861 Act threatening anyone performing abortions with life imprisonment, which was ruled as a breach of human rights by the Supreme Court this summer. The ruling followed a landslide referendum vote to legalise abortion in the Republic of Ireland, which Ms Johnson said means now is the right time to act.
Ms Johnson wants to remove the section of the 1861 Act that criminalises abortion and bring in her own, modernised Act in England and Wales, hoping Northern Ireland will consider following suit.
The Bill was listed for a second reading on November 23 but is unlikely to become law without Government support.