Responding to David Ford’s announcement to recommend changes to Northern Ireland’s abortion laws TUV Lagan Valley Westminster candidate Samuel Morrison said:
“TUV does not believe that the unborn child should be denied his or her fundamental human rights.
“Though there is a superficial plausibility within the promotion of abortion in cases of potentially fatal abnormalities the experience of the 1967 Act in Great Britain is a salutary warning against such glib assurance.
“The 1967 Act, on the face of it, permits abortion only in restricted circumstances, yet, in reality it swung open the door to abortion on demand.
“Who on reading the supposed restraints of Section 1 of the 1967 Act could imagine that under it over 8,000,000 babies have been terminated?
“There is a parallel danger that the Minister’s proposals will be similarly exploited. Denying that opportunity is an important consideration in TUV’s rejection of the Department of Justice proposals.
“It is also important to stress that the present law of Northern Ireland is not an absolute bar to abortion in, for example, a case of severe anencephaly. As the Bourne test makes clear, and as amplified by Girvan LJ in the 2009 Judicial Review, lawful termination is possible where there is a real and serious risk to a woman’s physical or mental health, which is either long term or permanent. Thus, the mother, whose mental health is so damaged by carrying a child with fatal foetal abnormality, can at present avail of lawful termination within Northern Ireland. In our view this is sufficient.”