Government promises to look into curbing the right to protest against abortion in Northern Ireland

Liam Gibson, Northern Ireland political officer with the Society for the Protection of the Unborn, strongly condemned the government’s stance on the matter, saying anyone interested in civil liberties should be “very alarmed” by it.

The segment is contained in the government’s own response to its consultation on the rules governing abortion in Northern Ireland – rules which changed today.

The new rules allow:

• Abortion on demand for any reason up to 12 weeks;

• Abortion on grounds of mental or physical health of the mother up to 24 weeks;

• And abortion on the grounds of “severe” foetal defects up until birth.

The government document says the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (which determined that restrictions on abortion amount to “violence against women”) believes “access to legal abortion services in Northern Ireland has been impeded by the presence and actions of anti-abortion protestors stationed at entrances”.

The government goes on to say that in England and Wales the Anti-Social Behaviour Crime and Policing Act 2014 has “been used on a few occasions to prohibit protest” – but the act does not cover Northern Ireland.

Such exclusion zones or have been derisively dubbed “free speech zones” by some anti-abortion campaigners.

It goes on to add that the freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly, and others (as expressed in the European Convention on Human Rights) are “ qualified rights which can be limited or restricted... in pursuit of a legitimate aim”.

Whilst the government says it “will not include any powers to establish exclusion zones” right now, it goes on to add that “we will keep this matter under review once abortion services have been commissioned and operational in Northern Ireland for some time”.

Mr Gibson said: “Freedom of speech is such an important part of the rule of law that once one group is targeted and is being denied that freedom of speech and assembly, that’s a threat to everybody’s rights.

“People who care about freedom of speech and other civil protections should be very alarmed by what the government has said.”

He said this is not about “incitement to violence” or “hate speech”, but was a case of trying to “curtail speech they find objectionable”.

Meanwhile today, Alliance MLA Paula Bradshaw has demanded that “alternative arrangements” be put in place for woman who want abortions but are finding travel hard due to Covid-19.