Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
Ban on free NHS abortions for Northern Irish women 'outdated'

CAMPAIGNERS said today that a High Court upholding of the ban on Northern Irish women receiving free NHS abortions in England simply exposed “outdated and restrictive laws.”

The ruling came in a test case brought by a girl, referred to only as “A.”

In October 2012, a then 15-year-old A and her mother travelled to a Marie Stopes clinic in Manchester to have a pregnancy terminated, having been denied in Northern Ireland. 

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
THE PRIVATEER: Wes Streeting
Features / 11 March 2026
11 March 2026

In the second part of her critique of Wes Streeting’s TenYear Plan for Health, HELEN MERCER looks at the central planks of this privatisation blueprint

A girl, who was injured in the overnight cross border fighting between Pakistan and Afghan forces, receives treatment at a hospital at Khar, in Bajaur, a district of Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering with Afghanistan, February 27, 2026
International Women’s Day 2026 / 7 March 2026
7 March 2026

Afghan women living under the Taliban are navigating a system that makes their public existence conditional on male approval, writes SHUKRIA RAHIMI

Women's rights campaigners in Westminster, London after taking part in a march from the Royal Courts of Justice calling for decriminalisation of abortion, June 17, 2023
International Women’s Day 2026 / 7 March 2026
7 March 2026

As peers prepare to debate reform of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi leads a bid to end the criminalisation of women who end pregnancies at home. LYNNE WALSH reports

Roz Foyer
STUC Women’s Conference 2025 / 29 October 2025
29 October 2025

Working-class women lead the fight for fair work and equitable pay and against sexual harassment, the rise of the far right and years of failed austerity policies, writes ROZ FOYER