A potentially groundbreaking judgment on Northern Ireland’s near total ban on abortion is expected to be delivered at the court of appeal in Belfast.
The case is being brought by a young woman known only as “A” who was a minor at the time she was forced to travel to England for a termination. The legal action is also being taken by her mother, known only as “B”.
The women’s lawyers said that claimant “B” struggled to part-raise funds for her daughter to have a termination privately in England in October 2012.
Northern Ireland’s exclusion from the UK’s 1967 Abortion Act meant that it was impossible to have a termination in the region.
The secretary of state’s policy is to rely on the legal position in Northern Ireland in refusing to allow women resident there to have terminations for free on the NHS in England, the women’s legal team said ahead of the judgment.
Last month another Northern Irish woman, Sarah Ewart, started legal action to challenge the almost total ban on terminations in the region’s hospitals. Ewart’s legal bid to overturn the abortion ban is backed by the Northern Ireland human rights commission. She said the ordeal of having to be forced to seek a termination for a pregnancy that was doomed because her baby would have no brain turned into “a living nightmare”.
Around 2,000 women travel to English hospitals and clinics from Northern Ireland every year to have terminations. There is strong opposition to liberalising the province’s abortion laws inside the Northern Ireland assembly.
Abortion is only legal in Northern Ireland if a woman’s life is at risk or if there is a risk of permanent or serious damage to her mental or physical health. The 1967 Abortion Act was never extended to Northern Ireland and all the main local political parties oppose it.
Last week more than 200 people, mainly women, openly challenged the Police Service of Northern Ireland to arrest them after they admitted in an open letter that they had procured abortion pills for other women and girls in the province.
The pro-choice campaigners picketed the main police station in Derry, Strand Road, and invited the PSNI to arrest for breaking the law.
They have pledged to stage further pickets at police stations to highlight another case, which involves a mother being prosecuted for obtaining abortion pills for her underage daughter who was pregnant.
