NORTHERN Ireland’s restrictive abortion laws are incompatible with human rights and need “radical reconsideration,” Britain’s Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

But a majority of the court decided that the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) had no legal standing to bring its challenge, meaning the court had “no jurisdiction” to declare the legislation on abortion unlawful.

A majority of the seven-judge bench, however, did find that the current laws are incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights “insofar as it prohibits abortion in cases of rape, incest and fatal foetal abnormality.”