Northern Ireland abortion - sexual health professor says GB should relax legislation and follow NI model

But one pro-life campaigner in NI claims that this path has actually been a long term strategy of pro-choice campaigners.

She was speaking after a report to MPs recommended that the law in GB should change to allow nurses and midwives to perform early-stage abortions and offer abortion pills - and that the need for two doctors to sign off on the procedure should be scrapped.

What is billed as the largest study of abortion in Britain recommended loosening of existing laws in GB. The study, being presented to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Sexual and Reproductive Health, was led by researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).

Kaye Wellings, professor of sexual and reproductive health research at LSHTM, said: “Ultimately, it seems likely that Britain will follow other countries – Ireland, Northern Ireland, Sweden, Australia and Canada – in decriminalising abortion entirely and having it subject to the professional and regulatory, rather than criminal, sanctions that apply to other aspects of healthcare."

But Dawn McEvoy, of pro-life campaign group Both Lives Matter, says the proposals for England reflect what is already in place in NI.

"Northern Ireland is now held up as the most progressive model in the UK which all the other regions should follow - and in fact I think that was the goal all along by pro-choice campaigners," she said.

All criminal sanctions for abortion were removed in NI, but in England, she says, a woman who induces her own abortion after the first three months still commits a criminal offence.

One woman her organisation supports is Marie from Belfast, who is in her early fifties.

In her early twenties she became pregnant in London. Although she wanted to keep the baby, a close relative and her boyfriend persuaded her to have an abortion.

"I lived with the guilt and shame for 20 years until becoming a Christian set me free - though I still live with the grief,” she said.

Even under the current English legislation she believes it was too easy to access an abortion in London.

She had one 45 minute consultation with a private abortion clinic and had the abortion within a week.

"There was no mention of adoption or the long term mental health impacts. But these new proposals would make it even easier. I could go to a sexual health clinic and have an abortion as easily as getting contraception. A nurse or midwife could give me the tablets the same day, with no doctors involved".

But Ulster University academic and pro-choice campaigner Goretti Horgan said the recommendations were very welcome.

"This will hugely reduce the cost of providing abortion services and bring practice there in line with World Health Organisation guidance,” she said.

"Indeed, not only does WHO say that the evidence supports early abortion medication being prescribed by nursing staff, it says that pharmacists could also prescribe them as they do emergency contraception and viagra.

"The statistical evidence shows that abortion pills are eight to ten times safer than Viagra yet it is available over the counter while, currently, two doctors have to sign off on their prescription in Britain."