Emma Campbell: We deserve five-star reproductive rights

Campaigners were celebrating last week as the UK parliament took the first step to defend reproductive rights. But, as an abortion activist working here in Belfast, I was frustrated at a lack of willingness to fix the problems with the amendment. Even if it becomes law, the work that I do every day helping people here in Northern Ireland would still see me facing criminal charges if I did it in England and Wales.

I’ve been fighting for reproductive rights for 15 years and helping people access abortions much longer. When we started talking about removing the threat of prosecution from people making decisions about their lives and their families, non-governmental organisations around us were convinced we would never change the law in our lifetime. But when we’re striving for change we need hopeful imagination.

Northern Ireland is a region beset with political intransigence and often wilful obfuscation. So Alliance for Choice was always clear about our bottom line: abortion seekers or anyone who helped them could no longer be arrested or criminalised. We had to make sure that the people who needed access the most would never be at risk from prosecution, ourselves as active abortion doulas, as well as the friends and family that help abortion seekers, would equally be safe to help them.

With the help of a coalition of solidarity across this island, our neighbours in Great Britain and the persistence of Stella Creasy, in 2019 we secured a seismic change. From a near-total ban in Northern Ireland, abortion was fully decriminalised across the region.

So when MPs started to get behind Tonia Antoniazzi’s limited amendment, lifting the threat of prosecution from women acting in relation to their own pregnancies, many of us were pushing for more. The majority of MPs in the UK parliament are currently pro-choice, so it’s wild to waste energy campaigning and lobbying for half measures, when a framework that fully complies with human rights already exists in Northern Ireland – and was there for the taking.

Standing alongside people from across the UK and organisations including Abortion Support Network, Pregnant Then Screwed, Ad-iyah, and the Reproductive Justice Initiative, we urged MPs to heed the harsh lessons from across the Atlantic and put the rights we will always need into law now. We told them that Antoniazzi’s amendment didn’t go far enough, and, by closing off one avenue to secure convictions, could even increase the threat of prosecution for people like myself and parents, friends, siblings and partners – as activists have already found in Poland.

The last five years have taught us that nobody can predict the future – apart from the Simpsons. But the far right is surging all around the world, and Nigel Farage is hoping his war on sexual, gender and reproductive rights will catapult him into Downing Street.

The crime and policing bill is heading to the House of Lords, where peers have the chance to bring the law on abortion into the 21st century. At Alliance for Choice, we will accept nothing less than a future where abortion is free, safe and accessible to people who need it without arrest. The time to act is now.