CNA Staff, Jun 5, 2020 / 05:06 pm (CNA).- While saying that abortion regulation is a devolved issue, the British Minister of State for Northern Ireland emphasized at Westminster Thursday that any local changes to the region’s abortion law would have to comply with human rights conventions.
Earlier in the week the Northern Ireland Assembly passed a non-binding motion rejecting the imposition of abortion regulations by the Westminster parliament.
“We hope that the regulations provide a solid framework for abortion services to be provided within Northern Ireland, although I appreciate that this remains a devolved issue and the Assembly can amend the regulations in future, subject to the usual Assembly and other procedures, including compliance with the European convention on human rights,” Robin Walker, the Northern Ireland minister, said June 4 while answering questions from members of parliament.
“If the Executive and Assembly were to legislate for an alternative approach, it would still be required to be human rights and convention-compliant,” he added.
The Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020, which came into force March 31, allow elective abortions up to 12 weeks of pregnancy; abortions up to 24 weeks in cases of risk to the mother’s physical or mental health; and abortion without time limit in cases of severe fetal impairment or fetal fetal abnormality.
Previously, abortion was legally permitted in the region only if the mother’s life was at risk or if there was risk of long term or permanent, serious damage to her mental or physical health.
The new framework was adopted to implement Westminster’s Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019, which decriminalized abortion in Northern Ireland and placed a moratorium on abortion-related criminal prosecutions, and obliged the UK government to create legal access to abortion in the region by March 31.
The NI EF Act required that the recommendations of a UN report on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women be implemented.
Walker maintained June 4 that “The Government are … under a clear statutory duty to allow for access to abortions in cases of both severe foetal impairment and fatal foetal abnormalities, and this is what we have delivered … We consider the regulations in this regard to be compatible with the requirements under the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities.”
The regulations will be debated in a House of Commons Committee June 8, and afterwards in the House of Lords.
Thursday’s questions about the regulations were opened by Jeffrey Donaldson, a member of the Democratic Unionist Party, Northern Ireland’s leading pro-life party.
Donaldson urged that “the Government should withdraw the regulations, respect the fact that devolution has been restored and, rather than seek to further undermine devolution, allow the Northern Ireland Assembly its rightful place to legislate on its own abortion law.”
He noted that the regulations’ provision for abortion in cases of severe fetal impairment “was not even required by CEDAW.”
MPs who participated in the discussion were divided over the regulations. Of the nine members of the governing Conservative Party who asked questions of Walker, six expressed support for the regulations, or a more liberal provision of abortion access.
Two members of the Labour Party expressed support for the regulations, as did one Liberal Democrat from a Scottish constituency, while one Labour Party member spoke in favor of devolution and handing the matter over to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Four DUP members voiced their opposition to the regulations.
Ian Paisley Jr commented that CEDAW does not require legislation for a full-term abortions, disability abortions, or sex-selection abortions, yet “that is that what is going to happen in Northern Ireland as a result of what has occurred in this place.”
Carla Lockhart, also a member of the DUP, commented that “the Government…continue to ride roughshod over the devolved Administration in Northern Ireland. They are discriminating against people who have non-fatal disabilities and going far beyond their legal requirement.”
“Will the Minister recognise the severe offence that the regulations cause to people with disabilities and also that the clear will of the devolved institutions is that the regulations are not wanted in Northern Ireland?” she asked. “What is the Minister’s message today to Heidi Crowter, who says that she feels she should not exist in this society if the regulations go ahead? … Both lives matter. It is not just about women’s health, but about both lives. It is not the Government’s right to impose such liberal abortion laws on Northern Ireland that will see abortion up to birth for disability.”
Walker responded that “nobody in the House wants to regulate or legislate in any way to the detriment of people with disabilities. We rightly have a huge body of legislation in this country to protect the rights of people with disabilities. It is not for the Government—and it is not the approach we take in the rest of the UK—to list specific conditions that it may or not be decided constitute severe foetal impairment.”
He maintained that “Addressing [severe foetal impairment] was a specific requirement of the CEDAW report, which is why it is included in the regulations.”
The Northern Ireland minister said that “this Government believe in supporting the rights of people with disabilities and do not in any way see these regulations as impinging on those. The regulations mirror the law in the rest of the UK, where abortions are permitted in cases of severe foetal impairment and fatal foetal abnormality, with no time limit. The Abortion Act does not define what conditions fit within this meaning, but similarly, it is an individual’s decision based on proper medical assessments and advice and other relevant provision of information and support.”
Walker also noted that the government had sought to conform Northern Ireland’s regulations to those in the rest of the UK, noting that it had used “the legal basis that has been established in England, Scotland, Wales for this process and [was] ensuring that we stick to it as closely as possible, particularly on issues such as conscientious objection…However, our approach throughout the design of this framework is to ensure that the outcomes are as consistent as possible.”
He also said that “it is important that wherever possible we make sure the outcomes of the regulations in Northern Ireland are aligned with the outcomes in the rest of [Great Britain]. It is important both because it is the right thing to do fundamentally—as a Unionist I believe it is the right thing to do—and because the approach in the rest of the UK has been legally tested and found to be compliant with the relevant human rights law.”
And when questioned about devolution and the possibility of the Northern Ireland Assembly legislating on the problem, Walker responded that “it is in the hands of the Assembly to propose reforms and a way forward on the regulations, so long as it can do so in a way that is CEDAW compliant. I would be very happy for it to take that opportunity. There is nothing to prohibit it doing so, and it is a matter of regret that, having been in place for a number of months before the regulations came into force, it has not.”
“However, my firm understanding of the advice that the Government have received is that the legal obligations on us to ensure a human rights-compliant model in every part of the UK, including Northern Ireland, remain in place,” he added.
A legislation scrutiny committee of the House of Lords published in April a report which noted that the regulations are more expansive than were required by law.
Northern Ireland rejected the Abortion Act 1967, which legalized abortion in England, Wales, and Scotland; and bills to legalize abortion in cases of fatal fetal abnormality, rape, or incest failed in the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2016.
Northern Irish women had been able to procure free National Health Service abortions in England, Scotland, and Wales since November 2017. They are allowed to travel to the rest of the UK to procure abortions during the coronavirus outbreak.
The amendment to the NI EF Act obliging the government to provide for legal abortion in Northern Ireland was introduced by Stella Creasy, a Labour MP who represents a London constituency.
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Of course a headliner announcement, made in the likeness of a papal pronouncement. Card Hollerich’s premise that a happy medium will be found to appease those with their knives out is, rather than amelioration, the mistake that permanent truth, intrinsic evil, the revealed nature of the good acts necessary for salvation can be essentially adjusted.
We may, out of good will, empathize with Card Grech’s rejoicing over the joy in the eyes perceived in Synod participants. Sentiment, though a necessary feature of our humanness, does not determine good or evil, nor in itself the rationale. That belongs to the apprehensive capacity of intellect. While there is an attractiveness to an ordained women’s diaconate – for one I would not be blown away should it occur, whereas approval of adult homosexual relations, Hollerich’s pet proposal is intrinsic evil in any form of behavior – it does not find evidence in Christ’s institution of the laying of hands by Him, and transfer to the Apostles. After Vat II Catholic professors argued the ludicrousness of the ‘pipeline’ doctrine, the unbroken lineage of laying of hands. Although they offered zero argument for the validity of simply wishing to be an ordained minister of the Gospels. The truth is, revealed truth cannot be mitigated to make us all feel jolly. The truth of Christ requires effort, sacrifice, obedience, and the sine qua non of humility.
We read: “Grech said one bishop told him he saw ‘ice melt’ in people during the gathering.”
Not to throw cold water on the festivities and even the possibilities, but simply to notice that as a band continued to play, ice fragments also melted for a short while on the deck of the “unsinkable” Titanic.
RE: the vote on women deacons. I think so many voted FOR reviewing the issue in the future because an overwhelming number of lefties, lay and cleric, were invited to the synod by Pope Francis. He was packing the vote. We don’t need women deacons- we need more men to be encouraged to serve as deacons. Women do ENOUGH already. Move over and make room for the men (fathers).
Three men in our diocese applied to be permanent deacons. All three were rejected. Why? Well I don’t know about two of the men, because I have never met them (different parish, far away), but I am aquatinted with one of them. He leans toward “traditional”.
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Something tells me that has something to do with it.
Obviously, all are no aware that apostate Bishops and Cardinals are completely public in their open rejection of the commands of Jesus and The Holy Spirit’s revelation / commands against fornication and sodomy.
That apostasy is a given.
On the prospect of ordaining women as deacons, this is the more subtle form of manipulation. One convert Jennifer Ferrara, noted in her conversion story (in the book “There We Stood, Here We Stand”), that when she, as an orthodox-believing Lutheran pastor, read in 1996 that the ELCA had decided to cover the cost of all abortions in its health care plan for Church employees, she was stunned, in reading this response by a fellow-orthodox Lutheran pastor: “Resl Churches Don’t Kill Babies.”
Ferrara noted that though she was orthodox, that is, believed in the commands against fornication, sodomy and abortion, she was an oddity among ordained women in the ELCA, who were in the vast majority what she called “liberals,” particularly regarding sexual morality.
Within 2 years of accepting abortion, the ELCA entered into an “altar and pulpit fellowship” with the United Church of Christ, “which ordained practicing homosexuals.”
So, the result on display is that the women’s ordination thing is just a stalking horse for the sanctification of fornication, sodomy and abortion.
Chris, I should add to your last sentence: “abortion.”…all of which will tend to future sanctioning of ‘lawful’ transhuman promulgating and propagating, pedophilia, polyamory, trafficking and slavery and euthanasia of ‘recalcitrant’ persons or their offspring, etc. Venial sins tend to mortal when left unchecked.
-Sponsored and approved by the powerful lacking without soul, heart, or head.
The vote by this group proves nothing except how many of them lack a spine. That would be the majority. Too afraid to buck the very clear sentiments of the current Pope. Too afraid to be castigated by the press as being anti- woman and anti-woke. So, if these women are ordained deacons, where do they go from there? That’s assuming there is a “there” left, after disaffected Catholics take their wallets and leave over such a travesty. Or is this just a slippery slope down the hill to ordained women priests?? My opinion of this synod remains unchanged. Disgusting and unneeded.
There will be no change in doctrine or organization. Just cosmetic change whereby we are friendlier to gays and women. So what?
Francis is a pastor, not a cop. No real change, but less confrontation.
“Just cosmetic change whereby we are friendlier to gays and women.”
Ah, that explains the endless documents, constant meetings, month-long meeting in Rome (with another in a year). Makes perfect sense.
“Francis is a pastor, not a cop.”
Especially if you prefer traditional liturgy, think doctrine is important, uphold moral teachings, and think the constant chatter and bloviating about sexual devianc—er, diversity, women priests, women deacons, etc., is both confusing and counter-productive to authentic witness.
Less sarcastically: anyone paying attention to the Rupnik situation (as well as a host of others over the past decade) knows that Francis’s handling of it has been an abomination and is about as anti-pastoral as can be.
Yes, Rupnik was mishandled. Remember Marcial Maciel and so many others that were also mishandled by other Popes.
You seem to worry so much about Synods doing damage, but the clerical sexual abuse of minors scandals have done much more damage. A lot of people have just walked away in disgust. As that great American philosopher Yogi Berra said: “If people don’t come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them.” Substitute Church for ballpark and I think it covers the situation.
“the clerical sexual abuse of minors” – translated = homosexual lifestyle of clergy.
I was told in a follow up comment to my recent lament that I was being “nonsensical” to hold the view I will now repeat whether it was well received or not the way I awkwardly expressed it when I was half asleep. (CWR might consider an edit option) When our Church orchestrates a performance for the whole world to take notice and advertise to the whole world that this is what the Holy Spirit is endorsing because our Pope says it is, and we blasphemously presume to dictate our ruminations to the Holy Spirit, yet we claim to have a Deposit of Faith that has been formed historically by a blood, sweat, and tears struggle of saints responding to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and today we put on a buffoonish display before the world of committees “rethinking” that maybe God got it tragically wrong in the truth He endowed in the past to His Church and His people to give witness to the world, then it does not matter that no doctrines have been changed.
The integrity of God’s people giving witness, including our mission to witness such things like the sacredness of unborn life, now mystically divorced from sexuality at the behest of the morally bankrupt, has been made a laughingstock to the entire world. And consequences of mass murderous proportions are no laughing matter.
A renewed commentary well worth posting Edward.
IMO, Cdl. Hollerich has had his fifteen minutes of fame.
His Eminence Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich is blessed with a prophetic voice. Evangelization and conversion are ongoing and never ending opportunities. The Synod on Synodality has been an exercise in examination of conscience and discernment. Good things are bound to come from those who participated in the month long retreat and their supporters who have been praying ceaselessly for the success of the Synod. Tidings of comfort and joy are awaiting pilgrims here, there, and everywhere.
Dr. Coelho, that’s really effective satire. I couldn’t stop laughing. Keep it coming.
His Eminence Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich a “prophetic voice”? If pigs could fly…
The “success of the Synod” can come either through the synod, OR around it. One embedded agenda item about the “fly” (and endorsed by Hollerich) has been to “walk together” past the sexual abuse scandal to now abuse the Holy Spirit.
Well, bypassing or moving around this and other embedded agendas, things might be looking up, after all. Here’s a link to a critique by Cardinal Muller of the DRAFT synodal report, together with a later link covering changes in the FINAL report which, of course, is not final…
https://www.ncregister.com/interview/cardinal-mueller-says-synod-on-synodality-is-being-used-by-some-to-prepare-the-church-to-accept-false-teaching
https://www.ncregister.com/news/synod-on-synodality-what-changed