"A massive victory". That's how one national newspaper described yesterday's decision by the government to pay £1400 to pregnant women to travel from Northern Ireland to Britain to end the life of their unborn child. If this is a victory, what constitutes a defeat?
Every abortion is a tragedy – a tragedy for a child whose life is taken and a tragedy for the mother who may have been persuaded that she has no choice but to have an abortion.
There are now 100,000 people alive in Northern Ireland who would be dead if Britain’s abortion laws had applied. So who has proved the more worthy champion of the supreme human right – the very right to life itself? Is it those whose legislation 50 years ago signed a death warrant for 8 million British babies, or those Northern Irish whose faithfulness saved the lives of 100,000?
