CNA Staff, Apr 29, 2020 / 01:01 pm (CNA).- A legislation scrutiny committee of the House of Lords last week published a report on the abortion regulations imposed on Northern Ireland by the British government, noting that the regulations are more expansive than were required by law.
Among the key criticisms in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s April 23 report was the six-week duration of public consultation on the proposed regulations. The committee includes members of the Conservative Party, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats, as well as crossbenchers.
“In our view this is too short for so sensitive a topic, the committee wrote. “Added to which, it took place during the General Election period and in the run up to Christmas, neither of which conforms with best practice. Of the over 21,000 responses received, 79% registered general opposition to any change to the established position in Northern Ireland.”
The committee received a number of submissions that “criticise the Government response to the consultation for failing to explain why such a strong level of objection has been overridden,” and which “assert that no attempt has been made to engage with them to address their objections or with the restored Northern Ireland Executive, and that certain provisions … were not included in the consultation document.”
In addition, the Lords’ committee said that the regulations should not have been made so soon before a parliamentary recess: “While acknowledging that due to the current coronavirus crisis, Ministers have had much to occupy them, we find it regrettable that the Government chose to lay so controversial an instrument just as a recess started and, more importantly, so close to the implementation date set out in the 2019 Act, thereby denying Parliament an opportunity for scrutiny before the instrument came into effect.”
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.
The legislative scrutiny committee said its report on the regulations sets out the key points made in submissions from members of the House of Commons, House of Lords, and the Northern Ireland Assembly, as well as churches and other organizations.
“This Report also notes several instances where the Government’s administrative process for bringing these Regulations forward appears suboptimal,” it added, before drawing the regulations to the special attention of the House.
The committee noted that nearly all the submissions it received are critical of the regulations’ provision for conscientious objection.
Conscientious objection is allowed for direct participation in abortion, but not for ancillary, administrative, or managerial tasks associated with the procedure, because, according to the regulations, that “would have consequences on a practical level and would therefore undermine the effective provision of abortion services in Northern Ireland.”
The exclusion of those carrying out ancillary, administrative, or managerial tasks from conscientious objection may be “too narrow and does not adequately protect” the rights to religious or philosophical beliefs under the European Convention on Human Rights.
According to the committee, the Attorney General for Northern Ireland submitted that ancillary staff are unlawfully discriminated against because the Northern Ireland Act 1998 prevents the Assembly and the Secretary of State “from enacting any provision which discriminates against any person or class of person on the ground of religious belief or political opinion.”
The committee wrote that “Given the sensitivity of the issues around conscientious objection, the House may wish to ask the Minister to consider further the scope of the policy and how it will be interpreted.”
The report also discussed the regulation of abortion in cases of severe fetal impairment or fetal fetal abnormality.
Several submissions said the abortion of those with severe impairment is contrary to EU law because the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities “extends to those in the womb,” but that the region’s attorney general acknowledged that the NI EF Act required the implementation of such a regulation because of CEDAW.
“There therefore appears to be a question over which UN Convention should take priority,” the committee wrote.
However, the Northern Ireland Office holds that the UNCRPD is not a binding law, and added: “we do not agree that the provision extends protection to those in the womb.”
The legislative scrutiny committee noted that the “the regime chosen largely mirrors the services available in the rest of the UK. In the light of the overwhelmingly negative response to the consultation exercise, it would have been better if the reasons for the specific policy choices made, were explained in more detail in the EM, and the House may wish to press the Minister for further explanation.”
Other submissions noted that “severe disability” could be interpreted differently and could include cleft lip or Down syndrome, and that the CEDAW recommendation requires the provision of abortion for “severe foetal impairment”, while not “perpetuating sterotypes towards persons with disabilities.”
“The House may wish to press the Minister about how these provisions will be interpreted,” the committee noted.
Some submissions also noted that because the baby’s sex can be identified at 10 weeks, and elective abortions are permitted up to 12 weeks, “there is a significant omission in the Regulations in that … they do not prevent abortion on the grounds of the foetus’s gender.”
The report concludes noting that “the NIO states that, where possible, this statutory framework mirrors the Abortion Act 1967 so that provision will be broadly consistent with the abortion services in the rest of the UK. The NIO was, however, obliged by law to implement the specific recommendations of the CEDAW Report which relate to Northern Ireland. This report has sought to expand on some of the Government’s policy choices and also to air the main issues drawn to our attention in submissions, to assist the House in the forthcoming debate.”
Right to Life UK spokesperson Catherine Robinson said April 28 that the committee “chosen to draw these regulations to the special attention of the House. The Committee has reported on a number of serious issues with the regulations.”
“MPs and Peers at Westminster must take on board these problems and vote against the regulations when they are brought before Parliament,” she added.
The regulations are due to be voted on before May 17.
David Alton, Baron Alton of Liverpool, commented April 25 that Northern Ireland’s abortion law “should have been decided in Northern Ireland not imposed by Westminster. Both Parliament and the Northern Ireland Office have shown great contempt for the people of Northern Ireland – and for normal constitutional and parliamentary good practice – in seeking to impose, by diktat, laws which in the rest of the UK have led to one child in the womb being aborted every three minutes.”
Lord Alton wrote that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report highlights “that this issue needs to be reconsidered in Northern Ireland by the Assembly which is responsible for what the law and policy on this issue. Riding roughshod over the Assembly in this way shows contempt for devolution, power sharing, proper political process, and the people of Northern Ireland.”
The bishops of Northern Ireland have encouraged members of Northern Ireland’s devolved legislature to debate the regulations, and, “insofar as they exceed the requirements of the Northern Ireland Act 2019 … to take steps to formulate new Regulations that will reflect more fully the will of a significant majority of the people in this jurisdiction to protect the lives of mothers and their unborn children.”
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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Holding fast to the legacy of the so called ” democratic” republic of 1936! These reds delighted then and now in the shedding of innocent blood and their legacy is one word: DEATH!!
Ms Redondo’s concern for the freedom of women to slaughter prenatal infants reveals how far the travesty of freedom of conscience has taken us. France, now Spain historically bulwarks of Catholic Christianity now the purveyors of infanticide. Freedom, conceptualized as the unprincipled right to do as one pleases regardless of its effect on Mankind, our humanness, and our justification before God.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, the creator of the definition of Liberty [see Planned Parenthood v Casey 1992] that has swept jurisprudence on this life and death matter was present with the current Supreme Court Justices Tuesday during Pres Trump’s Address to Congress. He seemed quite at ease and pleased. As a lifelong Catholic who promoted abortion rights and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act does he represent more than a sliver of Catholic thought?
Liberty, freedom of conscience, a right or a function? If we examine Kennedy’s famed conceptualization,”At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” in substance defines the liberty each person possesses that defines the function of free will. We are free to choose good, or evil if we wish. If we assumed that as our standard of Liberty, where does that locate Justice? If Justice itself means what is right and good, we abrogate its meaning. As has actually occurred in America as well as France and Spain. The juridical notion of justice is reduced to license.
Freedom, as a lawful standard of justice, is not simply the function of the human will to choose between good and evil. As a lawful juridical standard it transcends function, rather it is the exercise of the pursuit of Justice. That which is just and good. Freedom is the right to act within parameters of individual freedoms that must observe the rights of others particularly the right to life, the natural law reality of marriage exclusively between a man and a woman.
To Justice Anthony Kennedy, should you peruse the Internet I hope you find this article and its comments. If you find your concept of liberty a brilliant philosophical muse, this said in honest charity I advise you return to Catholic Catechesis for serious contemplation lest the verbally attractive hand basket you created will carry you off to Hell.