NORTHERN IRISH campaigners are “dismayed” at the suspended sentence for a woman who took miscarriage-inducing drugs as she was too poor to have an abortion in Britain.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was given a three-month suspended sentence after she bought drugs online to cause a miscarriage in July 2014, when she was 19.

Eight days later her housemates reported her to the police for buying the drugs.

Under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, abortion is illegal in Northern Ireland — even in cases of rape or fatal foetal abnormality — unless the mother’s life is in danger.

The woman said an abortion clinic in Britain had told her about the availability of the drugs.

Barrister Paul Bacon said his client felt “victimised” by the system.

Belfast-based anti-abortion campaign Precious Life said yesterday that it would launch an appeal against the “lenient” sentence. But members of reproductive rights group Alliance for Choice lobbied British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to put pressure on the Westminster government to overrule Stormont on the issue.

They argued that the Northern Ireland executive’s ban on abortion affected poor and young women most of all since they are least able to afford to travel to Britain for a termination procedure.

Vice-chair Emma Campbell said: “To arrest any UK citizen for taking one of the World Health Organisation’s safest recommended drugs in order to end her own pregnancy is the criminalisation of women who can’t afford to travel.

“This conviction is a threat to all people without similar means and is a clear signal that women are not recognised as full citizens,” she said.

“This is also an indictment on the state party with responsibility for our human rights, which is Westminster.”

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service said the woman “is a victim of Northern Ireland’s draconian abortion laws and the refusal of politicians to act to protect the health of their constituents.

“We call on all politicians to repeal these antiquated Victorian laws and create an abortion framework fit for women in 2016. We deserve nothing less.”