Abortion Discussion, Part Trois

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MrPudding wrote: »

It will be interest to see what happens now. The law still stands. The court has simply said it is incompatible. Now there needs to be legislation to fix the incompatibility, but I am guessing the assembly will be in no hurry to pass it...
MrP

I think the judge has gone a bit further than that, he has said that the existing legislation (1861 act) could or should be "read down" according to the findings of his court.

The judge considered whether sections 58 and 59 of the 1861 Act could be read down to ensure that no offence is committed in respect of terminations of FFAs and pregnancies due to sexual crime before the foetus is able to exist independently of the mother because such actions are not unlawful given his findings. He said there is a strong argument that any decision to prosecute in such cases would be an abuse of the law given the court’s conclusion that the law is disproportionate....

AFAIK this means a new interpretation is possible of existing laws. Or to put it another way, this judgement itself could now be considered a kind of precedent in law.
That would put abortion of rape/FFA cases in NI on a very similar legal footing to abortion where the mothers life was at substantial risk in ROI after the x-case. Since 1992, in ROI abortion was "not unlawful" where a suicide or threat to life of the mother could be demonstrated, even though the legislation was not updated for 2 decades. Admittedly that was not a lot of use to pregnant women over that period of time, when most doctors in ROI chose to play it safe and opt out, given the "chilling effect" caused by this lack of legal clarity.

It seems that the Good Friday Agreement is exercising a sort of quasi-constitutional control in NI that is different to other parts of the UK. The judge also noted that..

Section 6(2) of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 (“the 1998 Act”), which followed the Good Friday Agreement, made it clear that it was outside the legislative competence of the Assembly to pass any provisions which were “incompatible with any of the Convention Rights”. Mr Justice Horner commented that there can therefore be no dispute that one of the assurances given to the people of Northern Ireland was that their human rights as enshrined in the Convention would be protected under this new constitutional settlement:

I'm assuming that this "mini-constitution" prevents the interpretation/enforcement of any existing legislation which is incompatible with the Convention. Hence the obligation to "read down" existing laws.

From the summary of the judgement, he has invited more submissions on this issue before the judgement is finalised.

He noted, however, that no party to the application made the case that it was possible to read the legislation in such a way nor was any argument addressed to the court about whether prosecution in such circumstances would be an abuse of the law. Given that the court did not hear the parties on these issues, Mr Justice Horner said it was only proper that he gave them a further opportunity to make submissions before concluding his view.

But it also said somewhere that this hearing was actually held last June and only released now, so maybe it is final at this stage?

"......demons in hell brought whatever, whether it be sex, drugs, or women or whatever"

Can you order from them over the net, one wonders.