Belfast City Hall will be illuminated in green next month to celebrate an international campaign to permit abortion up to birth, prompting a backlash in the region.
The decision to illuminate Belfast City Hall on 28 September was made to celebrate International Safe Abortion Day after a City Council committee voted it through without debate.
The campaign has explicitly called for the “decriminalisation” of abortion and has called for “expand[ed] access to safe abortion by removing all policy barriers”. The complete decriminalisation of abortion and the removal of all policy barriers would make abortion legal throughout all nine months of pregnancy up until the point of birth.
This extreme position is radically at odds with the general population. Only 1% of women want abortion to be available up to birth, and 70% of women want the abortion limit to be reduced to 20 weeks or lower.
According to the Belfast News Letter, reports have confirmed that International Safe Abortion Day does not meet the criteria for illuminating Belfast City Hall, something that is usually done for council-run events, tourist events, and significant anniversaries of organisations with a Belfast connection. Groups related to medical procedures are explicitly ruled out in the eligibility criteria. Despite this, the City Council committee voted in favour of allowing it, with no debate.
Sarah Bunting, DUP Group Leader on Belfast City Council, stated that the landmark should not be “used to promote campaigns on deeply divisive and sensitive issues such as abortion”, but rather should be “a shared civic space welcoming to everyone”.
The decision must now come to the full council for ratification, and Bunting says her Party, which she describes as “a pro-life party and we believe in protecting the lives of both mothers and unborn children”, will seek to block it.
Pro-life protest planned at Belfast City Hall if illumination is not cancelled
The Northern Ireland-based pro-life organisation, Precious Life, has planned a protest outside Belfast City Hall on the day that the building is to be illuminated, unless the planned lights are cancelled.
Bernadette Smyth, the organisation’s director, said, “Belfast City Hall is not a billboard for abortion”.
“Public resources and ratepayers’ money must not be used to promote and celebrate the killing of unborn babies”, she said. “Abortion is never ‘safe’ because of the physical harm and psychological damage it causes women, and most definitely never ‘safe’ for the baby who is killed in every abortion”.
100,000 alive today as a result of Northern Ireland’s previous pro-life laws
Despite abortion being a devolved issue, English, Welsh and Scottish MPs in Westminster voted in July 2019 to impose an extreme abortion regime on Northern Ireland. No MPs representing a Northern Ireland constituency voted in support of imposing the new regime on Northern Ireland.
Prior to this extreme abortion regime being imposed on Northern Ireland, there were strong protections for the unborn, with abortion limited to situations when a mother’s life was in danger.
As a result of the previous pro-life laws that were in place in Northern Ireland, in January 2017 it was estimated that 100,000 people were alive in Northern Ireland who would not have been if abortion were available as it was in the rest of the UK under the 1967 Abortion Act.
Before the new abortion regime was imposed on Northern Ireland, disability-selective abortion for conditions such as Down’s syndrome, cleft lip and club foot was not permitted, and there was a culture of welcoming and supporting people with these disabilities rather than eliminating them.
The extreme abortion regime imposed on Northern Ireland included a provision that effectively legalised abortion up to birth for babies with disabilities including Down’s syndrome, cleft lip and club foot.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “It is shameful that a committee at Belfast City Council voted in favour of colouring one of its most well-known landmarks in celebration of such an extreme abortion agenda. If the Council were supporting abortion in general, that would be bad enough, but International Safe Abortion Day campaigns for legal abortion up to the point of birth. This is barbarism”.
“The campaign with which Belfast City Council have decided to align themselves also holds an extremely unpopular opinion, with only 1% of women supporting making abortion legal up until birth”.
“This planned illumination of Belfast City Hall should not go ahead, and the full council should not ratify the decision when it comes before them next week”.
