MORE than 50 years have passed since the 1967 Abortion Act.
This legislation specifically excluded Northern Ireland, although part of the United Kingdom.
Since then a steady stream
of women have crossed the
Irish Sea, from one part of the United Kingdom, to England Scotland, also parts of this United kingdom, to sek a termination of their pregnancy.
That this situation remains today is an obscenity.
I have written to Professor
Lesley Regan, President of the
Royal College of Obstetricians
and Gynaecologists, to seek clarification on our College’s role
on this issue.
If the College has been quietly lobbying politicians to put pressure on the Government of the day to address Northern Ireland’s continuing exemption from the Abortion Act, it has been singularly unsuccessful.
I await her reply.
We shall wait in vain for this Conservative administration to move for change – it is in the pocket of the Democratic Unionist Party, which has been steadfast in its opposition to therapeutic abortion.
We must hope to keep this issue alive.
The inequitable exclusion of Northern Ireland from the Act, with tragic and life-changing consequences down the decades, for those women who have had to cross the Irish sea four counsel and help here, unjustly denies them at home.
Graham LM Sharp MB FRCOG,
37 Monreith Road,
Newlands,
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