Ireland Repealed Its Abortion Ban. Is Northern Ireland Next?
After Dublin voted overwhelmingly to repeal its near-outright abortion ban, pressure is mounting for Belfast to do the same.
Yasmeen Serhan
May 29, 2018
All eyes were on the Republic of Ireland this weekend when it voted resoundingly in favor of repealing its near-total ban on abortion. In the days since, some of that attention has turned to Northern Ireland, where pressure is mounting to change its own restrictive abortion laws.
Though Northern Ireland is a member of the United Kingdom, where abortions are permitted within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy (and later, under exceptional circumstances), U.K. abortion law doesn’t apply in Northern Ireland. This is because the 1967 Abortion Act that legalized abortion access across the U.K. was never enforced in Northern Ireland, which instead adopted abortion laws similar to those of the Republic of Ireland.
Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/05/northern-ireland-abortion-ban/561383/