Thank you for contacting me about access to full abortion services in Northern Ireland.
I am very concerned that women and girls are still unable to access high-quality abortion and post-abortion care in Northern Ireland. The law changed more than two years ago, and abortion services should now be available as a healthcare service in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The Northern Ireland Office has extensively engaged with the Executive and Minister for Health, but they have failed to deliver.
I welcome the Government’s commitment that when establishing the legal framework for abortion that the services themselves would be delivered and overseen locally by the Department of Health and relevant health bodies in Northern Ireland, as a healthcare service. This is important as it will ensure that abortion services can be delivered in a sustainable way and become embedded into the health and social care system in Northern Ireland in the long term.
Although there has been a huge amount of pressure on health services in response to dealing with COVID-19, it does not absolve the responsibility on other important healthcare issues. As you may be aware the deadline for abortion services to be fully commissioned in Northern Ireland passed on 31 March 2022 and I support the Government’s response which has been to introduce the Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2022, which were passed by the House of Commons on 22 June.
These regulations place a further duty on the Department of Health to make abortion services available as soon as is reasonably practicable and remove the need for Executive Committee approval before services can be commissioned.
Abortion does remain a devolved issue and the Assembly can of course legislate on this issue.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.