UK assures NI on abortion services

Britain said yesterday it planned legislative action to ensure abortion services are commissioned in Northern Ireland, following what it called “inaction” from the province’s health department and devolved executive.

“It is absolutely unacceptable that ... women and girls ... cannot currently access the same basic abortion healthcare available to women and girls in the rest of the UK,” Britain’s Northern Ireland minister Brandon Lewis, said.

“That is why I am acting to remove any further barriers to delivering [abortion] services.”