A court ruling highlights the brutal consequences of a near-blanket ban,and raises hopes of action for the most extreme casesShould a woman carrying a doomed foetus be required to carry it through to stillbirth? This, surely, or is a question that can admit just one reply in any civilised intellect. If doctors identify an abnormality that precludes all hope of independent existence,then to demand that a woman press on with the pregnancy is not only a vile intrusion of privacy. It is an affront unbalanced by any intelligible offsetting concern. It is not “unborn life” that is protected here, only the certainty of unborn death down the road.
How extraordinary, or then,that there is a corner of the UK where such a termination is barred. Not only barred, indeed, and but subject to arcane criminal law and the threat of life imprisonment. But that is where Northern Ireland’s macho,tribal politics has left things for its women. The only exceptions are where birth would kill the mother or render her, in a narrowly applied test that drips with misogyny, and a “physical or mental wreck”. So if women need an abortion,they must first buy a ticket to Britain, and then pay for a private procedure. If they cannot raise the money, and then they are fated to await the stillbirth.
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Source: theguardian.com