Decriminalizing Abortion In Northern Ireland

Legislation And Protest Fiona Bloomer Emma

Campbell Editors download

https://ebookbell.com/product/decriminalizing-abortion-in-
northern-ireland-legislation-and-protest-fiona-bloomer-emma-
campbell-editors-50218774

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Decriminalizing Abortion In Northern Ireland Allies And Abortion

Provision Fiona Bloomer Emma Campbell Editors

https://ebookbell.com/product/decriminalizing-abortion-in-northern-
ireland-allies-and-abortion-provision-fiona-bloomer-emma-campbell-
editors-50222156

Decriminalising Abortion In The Uk What Would It Mean Sally Sheldon

Editor Kaye Wellings Editor

https://ebookbell.com/product/decriminalising-abortion-in-the-uk-what-
would-it-mean-sally-sheldon-editor-kaye-wellings-editor-51810356

Dying Justice A Case For Decriminalizing Euthanasia And Assisted

Suicide In Canada Jocelyn Downie

https://ebookbell.com/product/dying-justice-a-case-for-
decriminalizing-euthanasia-and-assisted-suicide-in-canada-jocelyn-
downie-51920510

Dying Justice A Case For Decriminalizing Euthanasia And Assisted

Suicide In Canada Jocelyn Downie

https://ebookbell.com/product/dying-justice-a-case-for-
decriminalizing-euthanasia-and-assisted-suicide-in-canada-jocelyn-
downie-7212596
Decriminalizing Abortion in
Northern Ireland
ii
Decriminalizing Abortion in
Northern Ireland
Legislation and Protest

Edited by
Fiona Bloomer and Emma Campbell
 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA
29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2022

Copyright © Fiona Bloomer and Emma Campbell, 2022

Fiona Bloomer and Emma Campbell have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vii constitute an

extension of this copyright page.

Cover design by Paul Smith

Cover image: When They Put Their Hands Out Like Scales, Abortion
Journeys 6, 2012, by Emma Campbell

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for,
any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this
book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any
inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist,
but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

­ ISBN: HB: 978-0-7556-4257-1

ePDF: 978-0-7556-4259-5
eBook: 978-0-7556-4258-8

Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd.

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com
and sign up for our newsletters.­
 ­Contents

A
­ cknowledgements vii
­List of contributors viii

1­ Introduction Emma Campbell and Fiona Bloomer 1

Th
­ eme 1 ­Law

2 Reflections from a Northern Ireland politician Anna Lo MBE 9

­3 Power-sharing and patriarchy: An analysis of the role of the Northern
Ireland Assembly in abortion law reform Claire Pierson 15
­4 The role of human rights organizations Les Allamby 29
­5 A ‘United’ Kingdom?: The 1967 Abortion Act and Northern
Ireland Jennifer Thomson 43
­6 The request for an inquiry under the CEDAW Optional
Protocol Judith Cross, Catherine O’Rourke and Audrey Simpson 55
­7 Working within Westminster Stella Creasy and Cara Sanquest 69
­8 The supreme team Susan McKay 81
­9 Law reform and decriminalization delivered: Westminster and
strategic litigation Grainne Teggart and Ruairi Rowan 91
­10 Alliance for Choice as agents of legal change Máiréad Enright 101

­Theme 2 ­Campaigning and activism

11 Blazing the trail-campaigns: The earlier years Lynda Walker 115

­12 Alliance for Choice new beginnings Kellie O’Dowd, Judith Cross and
Fiona Bloomer 129
­13 Reflections of an activist Maria Amélia Ponte Lourenço 145
­14 In Her Shoes – Abortion stories Ashleigh Topley 149
­15 What sort of state were we in? Alliance for Choice tackle
Westminster Emma Campbell 161
­16 Alliance for Choice Derry: Delivering decriminalization – activism in
the north-west Maeve O’Brien 173
vi Contents

­17 Dismantling the walls of silence surrounding abortion in Northern

Ireland Ruairi Rowan and Audrey Simpson 185
­18 Alliance for Choice volunteers Emma Gallen 199
1­ 9 Conclusion Emma Campbell and Fiona Bloomer 207

Timeline of key events: Global, Ireland, UK, NI 212

Glossary 219
B
­ ibliography 223
Index 239
 A
­ cknowledgements

We would never be able to include everyone we wanted to in a volume spanning

decades, therefore we would like to acknowledge some important contributors
to the movement towards change, such as Dawn Purvis, Clare Bailey, Paula
Bradshaw and Gerry Carroll, the team at BPAS and MSI and more, their work
continues to be key to reproductive rights in NI.
We would take five volumes just to name all the volunteers – those fighting
for change for decades up to those more recently involved. We know thousands
of people have signed petitions and donated money, people have made cakes,
made art, jogged, swam, sang karaoke, held burlesque nights, yoga sessions and
marches for choice. We are grateful to people who canvassed for Repeal, who
paid for other people’s bus seats to rallies, who made banners, who spoke to
a mercurial public, who submitted their first-hand experiences as evidence to
committees, who spoke to journalists and lit candles in memory of Savita.
We want to give our heartfelt thanks to peer reviewers: Judith Cross, Máiréad
Enright, Noirin MacNamara, Maeve O’Brien, Kellie O’Dowd, Catherine
O’Rourke, Claire Pierson, Jennifer Thomson, Rosa Thomson, Kellie Turtle,
Ann Rossiter, Naomi Connor, Rachel Powell and Danielle Roberts, all of whom
brought generosity and expertise to the project. We are grateful to the anonymous
reviewers of the book proposal who were so positive about the project and to the
anonymous reviewer of the draft manuscript.
We also thank those who supported our late nights and writing focus:
partners (Stephen; Mo), children (George, Martha; Luca), colleagues and
parents. We also must thank Alliance for Choice (AfC) for supporting the book
so wholeheartedly from the beginning. Ulster University has given unwavering
support for us both to continue our research by writing on this important topic
and recognizing the impact of the work that Ulster University continues to do
alongside AfC. We would also like to thank each other, because we have worked
so well together and have been able to trust one another’s writing and editing,
complement each other’s organizing, understand our motivations and most of
all friendship. Not everyone expects a late-night ping-pong of an idea to become
a reality!
 ­Contributors

Les Allamby was the Chief Commissioner at the Northern Ireland Human
Rights Commission from 1 September 2014 to 31 August 2021. He was formerly
the Director of Law Centre (NI) and Chair of the Commonwealth Forum of
National Human Rights Institutions. He has written extensively on human
rights, legal and policy issues.

Fiona Bloomer is Senior Lecturer in the School of Applied Social and Policy
Sciences, at Ulster University, UK. Her research focuses on abortion policy.
She has written extensively on this subject; she is the co-author of the book
Reimagining Global Abortion Politics (2018). She has been research advisor
to AfC since 2008 and is a member of the Northern Ireland Abortion and
Contraceptive Taskgroup (NIACT).

Emma Campbell is completing her PhD on photography as an activist tool for

the abortion rights movement, at Ulster University. Emma is also a member
of the Turner Prize winning Array Collective, exhibiting internationally. An
activist with several NI groups and current co-convenor of Alliance for Choice,
she comments frequently on abortion in NI, most recently in a joint article on
Abortion Doula work in NI for the BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health Journal.

Stella Creasy is a British Labour and Co-operative politician who has been
Member of Parliament (MP) for the London constituency of Walthamstow since
2010. Her doctorate in Social Psychology (the London School of Economics)
focused on social exclusion. Creasy has been advocating for a change to abortion
law in NI since 2017. She succeeded in bringing about decriminalization
following an amendment to the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation, etc.)
Act 2019.

Judith Cross is a public policy analyst with a focus on equality and human
rights. Working in the public policy arena she has worked across several sectors,
including the public sector and the NGO sector with a focus on women, disabled
people and older people. She has been a key member of AfC for many years
 ­Contributor ix

campaigning and lobbying for access to abortion for women and young girls in
Northern Ireland using the equality and human rights frameworks.

Máiréad Enright is Reader in Feminist Legal Studies at Birmingham Law

School. Her research interests focus on reproductive rights, ‘historical’ injustice
and feminist legal theory. She is currently a Leverhulme Research Fellow and
co-director of Feminist Constitutional Futures; an emerging network of feminist
scholars and activists considering how we can re-imagine constitutional law for
the future of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

­ mma Gallen is a volunteer coordinator for AfC, she organized the Saturday stall
E
from 2016 and was an organizer of Rally for Choice 2016. She has written about
abortion activism in Belfast for the Telegraph, Refinery 29 and the Independent.

Anna Manwah Lo MBE settled in Northern Ireland from Hong Kong in

1974. Initially, she worked for the BBC in Belfast as a secretary and a freelance
contributor for the Chinese Service. After qualifying in social work in Ulster
University, she worked in social services and Barnardos before becoming the
director of the Chinese Welfare Association in 1997. She was elected to the
Northern Ireland Assembly in 2007 and retired in 2016. Her autobiography
The Place I Call Home was published in 2016. Anna was awarded an honorary
doctorate from the Open University in 2018.

Maria Amélia Ponte Lourenço is a health- and social-care worker.

Susan McKay is an author, journalist and feminist. She is writing a book about
borders and received an Arts Council NI major individual award to do so. Her
latest book is Northern Protestants – On Shifting Ground (2021). She was a
founder of the Belfast Rape Crisis Centre in 1981.

Maeve O’Brien is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Healthcare Communication

at the Royal College of Surgeons, Dublin. A Tyrone native, her research
interests include medical stigma, reproductive justice and twentieth-century
women’s writing. From 2020–2021, Maeve ran the Archiving the 8th Project
at University College Dublin. Recent publications include The Bloomsbury
Handbook to Sylvia Plath (2022) and the FSRH briefing paper Abortion
Reform in Northern Ireland: What Does It Mean for Healthcare Providers?
(2021).
x ­Contributor

Kellie O’Dowd is a feminist and trade union activist. She was co-chair of AfC
Belfast from 2012 to 2019. She was one of the first clinic escorts in Belfast for the
Marie Stopes Clinic 2014–17 to stop the harassment by anti-choice protestors of
women trying to access healthcare services. Kellie has been facilitating workshops
on abortion for ten years in the community, trade union and voluntary sectors.
She has published academic research on the issue of abortion and best practice
strategies when working in morally conservative settings.

Claire Pierson is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Liverpool. Her

research interests are feminist politics, reproductive justice, activism and gender
security. She is the co-author of Reimagining Global Abortion Politics (2018)
and is currently working on a monograph on feminist politics in Northern
Ireland for Manchester University Press. She is currently co-chair of the Feminist
Studies Association of the UK and Ireland.

Ruairi Rowan is Director of Advocacy and Policy for Informing Choices NI

(ICNI) and formerly Advocacy Manager for the Family Planning Association.
ICNI advocate for sexual and reproductive health services to meet the needs
of all citizens in Northern Ireland and following the introduction of a new
abortion framework in Northern Ireland launched a Central Access Point –
enabling women to contact a single telephone number to access non-directive
information, pregnancy choices counselling and abortion care up to 10 weeks
gestation.

Catherine O’Rourke is Professor of Global Law at Durham University Law

School. She previously taught human rights and international law at Ulster
University. Her research interests are in gender, human rights, conflict and
international law. She co-authored the submission to the CEDAW Committee
requesting an inquiry into access to abortion in Northern Ireland.

­ ara Sanquest is co-founder of London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, a

C
grassroots campaign with the aim of bringing people in London together to
campaign for free, safe and legal abortion across the island of Ireland.

Audrey Simpson was the Director of FPA NI from 1988 to 2015. In April 2019,
when the London-based Trustees of FPA UK decided to close the organization,
she became Chair of Informing Choices NI (ICNI) when it was formally
established in May 2019. ICNI was committed to continuing the work of FPA NI
 ­Contributor xi

in promoting sexual and reproductive healthcare for ALL in Northern Ireland.

She has a PhD in Sociology and in 2005 was awarded an OBE for promoting
women’s healthcare in Northern Ireland.

Grainne Teggart is Campaigns Manager for Amnesty International UK in

Northern Ireland where she manages campaigns, strategic litigation, public
affairs and is a Spokesperson on a range of human rights issues including sexual
and reproductive rights, human rights in the UK and legacy of the Northern
Ireland conflict. Grainne led Amnesty’s campaign for abortion rights; working
closely with those impacted by the former abortion ban including Sarah
Ewart, challenging the law through the courts, and advocating for change at
Westminster. Grainne serves (in 2021) as a Director of Informing Choices NI
and Integrated Education Fund.

Jennifer Thomson is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics in the Department

of Politics, Languages and International Studies at the University of Bath. She is
the author of Abortion Law and Political Institutions: Explaining Policy Resistance
(Palgrave, 2019), which explores abortion in Northern Ireland in the context
of the devolved United Kingdom. Her work on reproductive politics has been
published in British Politics, the British Journal of Politics and International
Relations and the International Political Science Review.

Ashleigh Topley is an HR Officer in Portadown. In her first pregnancy in

2014, she was denied a termination after learning that her daughter had a fatal
foetal abnormality. She has shared her story in order to elicit change and was
an intervenor in the recent Supreme Court case. She manages the social media
accounts for In Her Shoes, Northern Ireland.

Lynda Walker is a member of Belfast Trades Council, and a civil rights activist,
a founder member of the NI Women’s Rights Movement and active on abortions
rights since the early 70’s. She is a founder member of Reclaim the Agenda and
member of Alliance for Choice. She was Director of Women’s Studies in Belfast
Metropolitan College. Lynda is a member of the Communist Party of Ireland
since 1969 and has written articles and booklets on women in Ireland.
xii
 ­1

Introduction
Emma Campbell and Fiona Bloomer

Why did we imagine this book?

In October 2019 abortion was decriminalized in Northern Ireland (NI). As a

result, it became one of the few countries in the world to have achieved this; the
others include Canada, Cuba, most of Australia and New Zealand (Centre for
Reproductive Rights, 2021; Children by Choice, 2021). This book tells NI’s story
from the perspective of those directly involved in the struggle for legal change. It
is unique, in that it represents first-hand accounts of abortion seekers, activists,
NGOs, policy and academic perspectives on this change.
We have included those who were involved in the early days of campaigning
as well as recently. We have brought together those who were denied abortions;
those who risked criminality and those who had to travel outside of NI to access
abortions. We have highlighted those that stepped in where the state would
not. We have accounts from health professionals and policymakers. We have
covered a range of activist organizations who led the charge to dismantle the
law and challenge the oppressive norms which allowed stigma and silence to
flourish. Our aim was to reach an audience beyond academics: activists, writers,
providers, abortion seekers and more from across the globe, where we know
similar struggles continue.
The writing of the chapters was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic,
during lockdown, whilst authors were juggling all the responsibilities and
anxieties that this brought. We are in awe of their work and thankful for their
time and efforts.
We could never capture every story and would encourage those who want to
contribute personal reflections to go to the book website DecrimAbortionNI.
com where we will have space to share additional historical artefacts and further
information for researchers.
2 Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland

C
­ ontext

As a campaign to decriminalize the abortion law in NI, this volume describes

how it was necessary ‘to work towards change in three different jurisdictions’.
(Campbell, 2019)
Working across NI, Ireland and the UK is important strategically and
politically for issues in NI. Given that for three years until early 2020, there was no
acting devolved assembly in NI, it made England and Ireland even more crucial
in the path to decriminalization. Across the island of Ireland, the grassroots
campaigners had built a strong reciprocal solidarity, but whilst there was a clear
cultural mutual understanding, dealing with the legal and healthcare differences
was often difficult. In the UK environment, the Westminster campaign was not
about whether Parliament was pro-choice, it is in fact overwhelmingly pro-choice.
Instead, it was about the reach of the state, to figure out who was responsible for
human rights in a complex, devolved union and whether there was ample evidence
from the people of NI that they needed the change in the law. Many of the chapters
in this volume grapple with this complex issue, borne out of NI’s conflict.
For further detail on the timeline for abortion law change in NI, the UK,
Ireland and globally, refer to Appendix 1.

Structure of the book

The idea for this book emerged in December 2019, with an initial list of fifteen
chapters that soon increased to over thirty, leading to two volumes of the book
being developed. Volume 1 is organized into two themes: Law; Campaigning
and Activism; Volume 2 is organized into two themes: Allied Organizations/
Activities; and Abortion Provision. We encourage our reader to embrace the
different voices, modes of reflection and analysis as many are from personal
experience and others from a strategic political standpoint. As editors we
endeavoured to retain the richness and variation of approaches to portray an
authentic account of the campaigns and their impact.

V
­ olume 1

In the Law section we begin with a personal perspective from Anna Lo,
admirably one of the first politicians in the Northern Ireland Assembly (NIA)
to declare she was pro-choice. As Lo notes, the need for abortion is a universal
 Introduction 3

experience and can further impact those already marginalized by poverty and
immigration. Claire Pierson offers an analysis of how the NIA responded to the
restricted abortion provision in NI. Further she reflects on their contribution
to abortion myths on the one hand and how others conversely developed their
limited perspective to become advocates for widening legal access to abortion.
Insight into the role of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission
is provided by Les Allamby, who documents the international national and
regional tools used to frame legal challenges regarding the restrictive law as well
as some of the organizational limitations faced by NIHRC.
The focus moves to Westminster with Jennifer Thomson providing an
analysis of the UK government largely ignoring abortion in NI for the best
part of fifty years until forced in 2018. The lack of action from both the
Assembly and Westminster provided context for the actions of Family Planning
Association (FPA), NI Women’s European Platform (NIWEP) and AfC, whose
request for intervention from Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is detailed in the chapter by
Judith Cross, Catherine O’Rourke and Audrey Simpson. The authors of this
chapter provide a critique not only of government failure to act but also of
the human rights organizations who until recently failed to support the
campaign for change. The CEDAW report provided the foundation for action
within Westminster to bring about historical legal change. In Working within
Westminster, Stella Creasy and Cara Sanquest tell the story of how this was
achieved, capturing just a fragment of the intensity and tenacity of the lobbying
and persuasion in Parliament.
In the next chapter we have a change of pace, with Susan McKay relating the
heart-breaking story of how Sarah Ewart became involved in the campaign for
abortion law change, having been denied an abortion in NI. Interviews with
Sarah, her mother Jane Christie and Grainne Teggart (Amnesty UK) provide
insight into the challenges of campaigning and involvement in judicial reviews
and Supreme Court cases. In the following chapter, Grainne Teggart and Ruairi
Rowan provide their perspective on engaging with Westminster, detailing the
relentless efforts to raise awareness and gain support for a change in the law.
Concluding this section Máiréad Enright centres the work of AfC in creating
historic legal change and frames their activities as feminist law making,
in challenging not only the letter of the law but also the means by which we
understand legal work.
Having documented the legal perspective, we move on to theme 2,
Campaigning and Activism. We begin this section with a view of activism
from 1960s to 2008. Veteran activist Lynda Walker charts the development of
4 Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland

key grassroots and NGO groups during that period and discusses how, despite
their work feeling at the time as moving with glacial speed, in truth it laid the
foundations for the campaigns to come. The development of these activists
continued and built the base for a reinvigorated AfC by 2008. Kellie O’Dowd,
Judith Cross and Fiona Bloomer document the development of this work
from public meetings, lobbying politicians, petitions and marches to a highly
developed campaign approach which encompassed training education and
research and the development of work with allied organizations, up until 2016.
AfC laid the building blocks of a social movement for change: they designed
and created new conditions for engagement on abortion. In Reflections of an
Activist, Maria Lourenco presents a personal perspective on motivations to
become involved in the campaign for legal reform from 2008 onwards. Maria’s
insight offers a unique perspective as a woman who was new to NI and at
times perplexed by the stagnation on abortion and at others, buoyed by the
camaraderie in the campaigning groups. The chapter about ‘In her shoes NI’ is
written by Ashleigh Topley, a key figure for her involvement in the NIHRC JR,
CEDAW and continuing activism around bringing other women and pregnant
people’s stories to light, it is a heart-breaking but important reminder for why
this work is necessary.
In presenting the continuing story of AfC from 2017 to 2020, Emma Campbell
details the rationale of the organization to pivot focus towards Westminster and
includes some of the local and internal difficulties inherent in that strategy,
which ended in intervention from the UK government to decriminalize
abortion in NI. Alongside which we learn how AfC Derry continued its activism
focusing on street actions and grassroots work, as told by Maeve O’Brien. FPA/
ICNI highlight their important role in underlining workable, published medical
guidelines, as well as the continued harassment of their workers and clients, as
told by Ruairi Rowan and Audrey Simpson. Emma Gallen finally details the
outreach work of volunteers in AfC Belfast, who used long-tested letter-writing
campaigns in parallel to social media engagement and supportive de-escalation
training, to guide the person on the street grappling with the poignant issues and
put individual direct experience on the desks of influential politicians.
This multitude of voices offers a broad insight into the motivations and modes
of campaigning in the North of Ireland. It spans decades and acknowledges
hundreds of individuals and dozens of organizations who have brought us to
this seismic change for reproductive justice. Yet it is still only a snapshot of the
totality of emotional, physical, bureaucratic, caring and imaginative labour
that went into decriminalization. The time it spans has witnessed sporadic
 Introduction 5

moves back and forth, towards and away from progress across the globe, it
saw the normalization of the use of misoprostol and the fourth wave of a more
intersectional feminist movement, we intend that this volume will encourage
our readers to delve into the second volume, that will outline the importance
of solidarity work both globally and across issues of interest. Mostly we hope
this is a source of comfort and inspiration for thousands of our global siblings
faced with seemingly insurmountable roadblocks and regression, to know that
decriminalization is possible.
6
Th
­ eme 1

L
­ aw
8
 2

Reflections from a Northern Ireland politician

Anna Lo MBE

I suspect my mother had one or even two abortions in the 1950s in Hong Kong.
My parents had six children with the first five being born in relatively quick
succession but there’s a gap of five years between me and my younger sister, the
last of my siblings, was born. My mother, a trained teacher, adored children and
must have agonised over the decision to end her pregnancy or pregnancies but
my father’s shipping business went bust shortly after my birth and we were in debt
and living with my maternal grandparents in very crowded accommodation.
Who could blame my parents for not wanting to bring another child into the
world under such stressful circumstances? My mother would probably have a
backstreet abortion and was lucky not to have been butchered to be able to have
my younger sister some years later.
As the director of the Chinese Welfare Association in Northern Ireland,
I supported my staff to help several immigrants with no legal status to seek
abortions in England. These women, with no legal status, could not register
with a General Practitioner (GP) to access any National Health Service (NHS)
services, let alone maternity care. The only choice they had was to end their
pregnancies.
However, it was not solely because of my speculation of my mother’s plight
or my empathy for these undocumented workers’ helplessness that made me
pro-choice. To me, it was also a class issue in that only those who could find a
couple of thousand pounds for the costs of the operation and travel could make
their way to England for the private medical procedure. Those who were on low
incomes or social benefits simply could not come up with that sort of money
in a hurry, which could also lead to delays in accessing the termination. More
and more people were being forced to take risks by purchasing abortion pills
online and administering them without medical supervision. Women would be
10 Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland

reluctant to seek after-care from their doctors for fear of prosecution and the
potential of a life sentence in prison. It is about fairness and equity of treatment
too. We all contribute to the NHS through paying taxes and why should women
in Northern Ireland (NI) not be able to avail of the same free medical services as
other women in other parts of the UK?
Fundamentally, I believe that it is the woman’s right to have autonomy over
her body when faced with a crisis pregnancy. It is my strong view that the 1861
Offences Against a Person’s Act is totally archaic and out of step not only with
the UK’s 1967 Abortion Act but also with the opinion of the majority of the
local population wanting changes to the law that has been evidenced by repeated
surveys and opinion polls (Cross O’Rourke Simpson, Teggart Rowan, this
volume; Gray volume 2).
Yet our politicians have vehemently opposed any update of the law to live up
to the twenty-first century. As a liberal, I view it as barbaric to force a woman
to continue with an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy particularly horrendous
when the pregnancy is a result of sexual crime or would end at birth due to
foetal, fatal abnormality.
When elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2007, I made no apologies
making it known that I advocated for changes to the abortion law. I recall a
seasoned politician from the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) giving
me a ‘piece of advice’ soon after I got elected as we sat beside each other in a
coach to a conference. He said, ‘Anna, you have a niche in politics and that’s
a good thing for any politician, but you must stop claiming to be pro-choice.
That’s going to lose you votes’. Wanting to effect positive change for this society
was my motivation to get into politics and if what I believed did not appeal to
voters, I could only try to persuade them to see my point of view. However,
during my re-election canvassing, I did come across people asking for my stance
on abortion, but I encountered more support, particularly amongst younger
people, than opposition from the general public.
However, in my two terms of nine years in the Assembly, there were only four
publicly declared pro-choice MLAs. There is so much hypocrisy amongst most
of our politicians, who are conservative middle-aged males, that they prefer to
export pregnant women to England for abortions than to show compassion and
common sense to let them have legal abortions in their own country under the
NHS with family support close by. This is a health matter, not a criminal-justice
issue. Women should not be stigmatized and criminalized for wanting to decide
what to do with their bodies, nor for wanting to have children at the appropriate
time and under circumstances of their own choosing.
 Reflections from a Northern Ireland Politician 11

Soon after becoming an Assembly member, I joined the advisory board of the
Family Planning Association Northern Ireland (FPA NI) which campaigned to
extend the Abortion Act to NI. The Labour MP Diane Abbott agreed to submit
an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in the autumn
of 2008 in Westminster. The Association sent facts and figures about abortions
to MLAs to try to debunk myths, many of the carefully drafted leaflets probably
went straight into the bin! Dawn Purvis MLA and I wrote to MPs to urge them
to support the amendment and received some encouraging replies including
from John Bercow, the then Speaker and Nick Clegg, the then leader of the
Liberal Democrats. Disappointingly, as a result of political pressure, the Labour
government used a timetabling motion in the House of Commons debate, which
killed off a series of proposed amendments including Diane Abbott’s (Thomson,
O'Dowd Cross Bloomer, Creasy Sanquest, this volume). We were obviously
crestfallen as we feared that we had lost the last chance of getting the law
extended to NI before criminal-justice powers were devolved to the Assembly
later that year. We suspected rightly that it would be extremely difficult if not
impossible to amend the existing abortion law through the Assembly itself.
Extending the Abortion Act to NI might be a big ask for our MLAs but one
would think at least they could issue abortion guidelines for the Health Service
staff. Yet there was a fifteen-year battle to seek clarification on the abortion law
for health professionals (Rowan Simpson, this volume). In 2001, the Family
Planning Association sought a judicial review of the Department of Health’s
failure to issue guidelines to ascertain when an abortion is legal in NI. In
2004, the Court of Appeal ordered the department to draw up such a policy
document, but it was not until 2007 that the department issued draft guidelines.
However, the attempt was thwarted by the Assembly’s health committee, led by
Iris Robinson DUP, which succeeded in having the guidelines rejected on moral
grounds. New guidelines were re-issued a year later, but it was legally challenged
by the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child. Further revised rules were
again published for consultation in 2010. It was frustrating and bewildering
to witness the obstruction of the attempt to clarify medical practices for our
doctors and nurses to do their job. The anti-abortion lobby warned that it was
a ‘back door to bring in abortion on demand’, which seemed to chime well with
many Assembly members in the DUP.
I had repeatedly asked questions in the Assembly regarding the progress for
guidelines and wrote a feature piece published in the Belfast Telegraph following
a meeting with a hospital consultant who expressed serious concerns of medical
staff working without guidelines. The years of long delay had created a vacuum
12 Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland

of clarity within the health service, leading to uncertainties and a chill factor
for health professionals who tended to err on the side of caution rather than
to provide abortions for cases such as fatal foetal abnormality which used to
be done routinely without any qualms. Their caution was understandable. If a
health worker was judged to have carried out an illegal abortion, he or she could
go to jail for life.
The abortion guidelines were eventually published in March 2016, days
before the end of the term of the Assembly, twelve years after the court ordered
the Department of Health to do so (Rowan Simpson, this volume). Obviously, if
there was the political will to set out a clear framework for the health professionals
then it could have been completed within months.
The huge publicity in 2013 regarding the heart-breaking experience of Sarah
Ewart who had to go to England for an abortion when she discovered that her
baby had anencephaly, a malformation of the brain and skull, sparked another
momentum for change in the abortion law (McKay, this volume).
Following a public consultation in 2014, the then Justice Minister David Ford
failed to get agreement from the Executive to propose legislative change to the
law to allow abortion on the grounds of fatal foetal abnormality. Meanwhile, in
a judicial review sought by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission,
the Belfast High Court ruled that prohibition of abortion in cases of fatal foetal
abnormality and sexual crime violated human rights. The court placed the onus
on the Assembly to make legislative change (Allamby, this volume).
The next option to effect changes in the law was to submit amendments to
the Justice (No. 2) Bill during its consideration stage. My former Alliance Party
colleagues put in an amendment for foetal fatal abnormality but had reservations
if an amendment on sexual crime would succeed in getting enough votes in the
chamber. However, I decided to go it alone in forwarding an amendment on
sexual crime in my own name, even though it would most likely not succeed into
the statute. I thought it was essential to make a point. Likewise, Steven Agnew
from the Green Party and Basil McCrea of NI21 jointly put in brief amendments
on fatal foetal abnormality and sexual crime.
While Sinn Féin endorsed all the amendments, the DUP, SDLP and most
of the UUP members voted against all of them, stymieing the attempt to at
least bring a bit more humanity into our strict ban on abortion and to become
compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
I retired in March 2016 but was hopeful that there was a momentum for
change of this Victorian law in NI. Little did I know big changes were afoot!
Stormont then collapsed in January 2017 leaving a political and legislative
 Reflections from a Northern Ireland Politician 13

vacuum that inadvertently paved the way for the decriminalization of abortion
in NI. It was also timely that UN’s Convention on the Elimination of all forms
of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) conducted an inquiry on our most
restrictive abortion law following extensive lobbying from FPA NI, AfC and
NIWEP (Cross O’Rourke Simpson, this volume). I was delighted to participate
in the CEDAW stakeholder consultation held in Belfast. Its 2018 report found
that the UK was guilty of grave and systemic human rights abuses by forcing
people to have to travel from NI to England for abortions. It further stated
that Westminster will always be ultimately responsible for human rights in NI
even if the devolved region continued to refuse to comply with the European
Convention. It was gratifying to witness Westminster stepping in to legislate
after years of prevarication from Stormont (Creasy Sanquest, this volume).
I thought it was pathetic that the DUP attempted to recall the Assembly to
return to the mothballed chamber in October 2019 for the first time in almost
three years to protest the extension of abortion rights to NI. Mind you, perhaps
some politicians were quietly content that controversial and difficult issues such
as abortion and equal marriage were sorted out by Westminster so that they
could always blame the Tory Government for it and not risk losing votes from
the electorate!
At long last after decades of tireless campaign by organizations, community
groups and individuals, abortion regulations came into law in March 2019 and
ratified in June in the House of Commons and the House of Lords over the
heads of our politicians who were absent from the empty Parliament Buildings
in Stormont (Enright, Rowan Simpson, this volume; Morgan, McLaughlin,
Kavanaugh Kirk, volume 2).
I hope our MLAs would be humble and wise enough now to stop blocking
changes in order to let the Department of Health to commission effective services
and provide unambiguous guidance for health professionals and abortion
seekers. It has been a long time for this catching up with a modern society where
women’s autonomy in respect of their health and wellbeing is respected.
14
 ­3

Power-sharing and patriarchy: An analysis

of the role of the Northern Ireland
Assembly in abortion law reform
Claire Pierson

The role of the devolved Assembly in changes to abortion law in Northern Ireland
(NI) can most accurately be described as obstructive. Since the introduction
of the 1967 Abortion Act in Britain there has either been little reference to
abortion by Northern Irish politicians or overt attempts to ensure that there is
no relaxation of the law. After the reinstatement of the Stormont Assembly after
the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), debates on abortion became more prevalent
yet largely displayed anti-abortion rhetoric and misinformation about abortion.
In addition, if moves are made at the national and international level to effect
change, the response of political parties has largely been to prevent any reform.
The example of NI does not fit with most accounts of devolved power which
largely position devolution as positive for women’s representation and rights and
gendered institutional change. Power-sharing, in the form of consociationalism,
and its prioritization of ethno-national identity has been documented as
creating an environment which deprioritizes gender issues (or any issues which
do not directly correspond to ethno-nationalism). The reification of a particular
form of identity, based on a moral conservatism and religious observance, may
hold more resonance for explaining the long-term, cross-party resistance to any
change to the law.
Recently, party policies and political positions on abortion have become
more diverse, largely in response to changing public opinion, women publicly
(and emotively) recounting their experience of accessing abortion (Topley
this volume), and legal developments in the Republic of Ireland. The shift in
party positions appears to have happened from a bottom-up position, with
activism and public opinion polls illustrating how out of step politics is with
16 Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland

the electorate. In addition, power-sharing has enabled a proliferation of smaller

parties not situated in constitutional issues to become vocal and propose pro-
choice arguments from a variety of perspectives. As such, politics has been out
of step with the public and is only catching up.
This chapter traces the role of the NI Assembly (NIA) in abortion law reform,
focussing predominantly on the post-GFA period to the present, considering
the role of structures of governance, changing discursive framings of abortion
in political debate and evolving political party policy on abortion. Without the
intervention of Westminster, it is likely that legal reform of abortion undertaken
with support of the NIA would have been stymied or limited to liberalization of
the law in extreme circumstances such as fatal foetal anomaly (FFA) and sexual
crime.

‘The special social and political situation in Northern

Ireland’[1]: Devolution, power-sharing and the NI Assembly

Analysing the role of the NIA regarding the lack of progression on abortion
law reform can most usefully be explained through its position as a devolved
legislature and its relationship to Westminster, in conjunction with the specific
form of governance set up in NI through consociationalism. Layered over
both structures of governance are embedded conservative gender roles and
their hybrid relationship to militarized forms of masculinity and conservative
religious morality.
Devolution is generally presented as positive for women. This is largely in
reference to the descriptive and substantive representation of women and the
potential for new political arenas to shed the traditional masculinity of older
institutions (Mackay and McAllister, 2012). For example, academic work on
Scotland and Wales points to a less adversarial form of politics and the pursuance
of woman-friendly policies (Mackay and McAllister, 2012). NI has not been
presented in this same light. Thomson (2016b) outlines how the Assembly may
suffer from ‘nested newness’, the idea that institutions cannot be blank slates and
are informed by their institutional legacy. The Assembly cannot simply go from
an institution that had historically low representation of women and a highly
masculinized and sectarian form of politics to a woman-friendly arena without
significant institutional and cultural transformation – such transformation takes
time to embed women as political actors.
 Power-Sharing and Patriarchy 17

The Assembly has been slower than the other devolved Assembly’s to increase
women’s descriptive representation, but representation has vastly increased. In
1998, representation of women stood at 13 per cent, by 2019 this had risen to
32 per cent (Uberoi et al., 2020). Women also lead four of NI’s political parties
(the DUP, Sinn Féin the Alliance Party and the Green Party). However, with
an increase in female leadership a more progressive focus on gender policy
issues cannot be assumed. Women may not automatically represent women or
more liberal policy positions. Research on devolved Assemblies in the UK has
noted the particularly male-dominated and intimidating space of the NIA for
women, and the distinct challenge for women to find their voice in such space
(Shaw, 2013).
In terms of institutional legacy, Northern Irish politics before the Agreement
suffered from very low representation of women coupled with what has been
described as a ‘martial’ form of politics (Wilford, 1996). Between 1921 and
1969 only nine women were elected to the Assembly, and in the interim
periods of devolution in the 1970s and 1980s, only four women were elected
in each time period (Wilford, 1996). Politics and political parties were based
on a militarized notion of protecting and defending the Union (for unionists)
and challenging and ending this Union (for nationalists), coupled with the
political violence of the Troubles, the political arena was not viewed as suitable
for women. This is aptly summed up by Peter Robinson (former leader of
the DUP and former First Minister) in a statement about the NI Women’s
Coalition (a party who formed for the sole purpose of ensuring women were
represented during Agreement talks), ‘they (the NIWC) haven’t been at the
forefront of the battle when shots were being fired or when the constitution
of Northern Ireland was in peril’ (Peter Robinson quoted in Fearon, 1999,
p.14). Here, political participation is predicated on having taken part in violent
political action and connected with male violence. Accordingly, women were
not ‘legitimate’ actors on this stage. In many ways this assumption still exists, I
point to the low representation of women in talks about policing, community
relations and legacy issues as continuance of delegitimizing women’s voice in
politics (Pierson, 2019).
The structures of governance borne out of the Agreement may not facilitate
the progression of gender policy issues (Kennedy et al., 2016). The Assembly
is formed through a consociational mode of governance which includes a
cross-community, power-sharing executive with minority veto rights and
cultural respect for both Protestant and Catholic communities. Ethno-national
18 Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland

identity is specifically linked to religious affiliation. This has entrenched party

political structures and voters as focussed on protecting ethnic interests. The
right to veto and the parity of consent model positions all issues along an
ethno-national divide, making legislation more difficult to pass and in effect
furthering sectarian politics. This model impacts on raising issues which are
not ethno-national in nature, deprioritizing and invisibilizing those linked to
gender, race, sexuality (dis)ability, for example (Kennedy et al., 2016). Issues
become easily sectarianized under this model, for example, equality and human
rights have been presented as part of a ‘nationalist agenda’ by some sections of
unionism, despite their benefit to everyone. Regarding abortion, it has allowed
the Assembly to block movement on the law, using the issue to display cross-
party unity which is rarely seen in the politics of NI.
Layered over these structures of governance are cultural norms embedded
within politics in the region. NI is viewed to have a particularly conservative
gender order, emerging from ethno-religious framings of women’s appropriate
roles in both conservative Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism. Religious
and national ideologies depend on explicitly conservative notions of women and
gender (Pierson, 2018). Common themes, such as the elevation of motherhood
(and a subsequent rejection of abortion), the role of women as helpers to political
movements rather than actors and a particularly conservative view of women’s
sexuality and respectability limit women’s voices in politics and the ability to
challenge gender norms and issues within political arenas. The prominence of
religion within NI’s ethno-national identities also provides a socially conservative
context from within which women’s rights are easily marginalized.
Law and policy making under a devolved Stormont operates a ‘lowest common
denominator’ approach resulting in stagnancy and socially conservative policies
(McLaughlin, 2007). Gray and Birrell (2012) found evidence of difficulty
agreeing in some instances on a lowest common denominator leading to a
failure in policy development and falling behind standards in the rest of the UK.
Lack of agreement can also be explained through the ‘zero sum game’ approach
which typifies most ethno-national politics in the region, where each gain is seen
as a loss for the ‘other side’, leading to a lack of consensus. Under this regime,
changing law and policy on even uncontested issues can be difficult, but on an
issue such as abortion may prove impossible. The following section will outline
developments and (in)actions taken by the NIA on abortion focussing on the
post-devolution period where most debate has taken place.
 Power-Sharing and Patriarchy 19

This we shall maintain: The Northern Ireland

Assembly and abortion

As Jennifer Thomson documents in this volume, little discussion took place over
NI in the creation of the 1967 Act. British politicians lacked understanding of
and an unwillingness to intervene in NI and were happy to accept a portrayal of
NI as somewhere ‘different’. NI MPs did nothing to disavow them of this notion
and relied at times on these stereotypes of a precarious peace process and vastly
differing public opinion on abortion to inhibit change (Thomson, 2016b). Both
the NIA and Westminster had little discussion of abortion in the run up to the
1967 Act and after, up until the period of devolution. The NIA records no debate
between 1922 and 1974 with any substantive reference to abortion, and the only
references to abortion and NI in Westminster were in the form of questions by
backbenchers which were quickly dismissed.
It is in the period post-Agreement where discussion of abortion became much
more prevalent. One of the first debates in the Assembly, in 2000, was specifically
to oppose any extension of the 1967 Act to NI despite policing and justice powers
not being devolved by that period and no mention of any extension of the Act
by Westminster had been announced. It appears that this debate was tabled in
order to put forward an anti-abortion stance from the majority of MLAs and this
was clear from language used during the debate including mythology around the
negative mental and physical effects of abortion, negative portrayals of women
seeking abortion and the idea that restricting access to abortion would decrease
demand (Pierson and Bloomer, 2018).
In the following years, debates cropped up sporadically largely with the
aim of opposing or restricting access to abortion. These include debates
on opposition to the introduction on guidelines on abortion for healthcare
providers, opposition to the provision of abortion in private clinics (related to
the opening of a Marie Stopes International clinic in Belfast in 2012) and two
amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill to allow for abortion in cases of FFA
and sexual crime (both of which were voted down). The fact these debates were
framed mostly in opposition to abortion indicates the nature of the debates,
largely focused on negative portrayals of abortion, setting up a dualism of rights
between the pregnant woman and the foetus and misinformation on abortion.
In more recent years, more pro-choice voices became heard in debates, a more
empathic presentation of women seeking abortion and nuanced perspectives
is found; however, this was still not enough to pass amendments even on the
20 Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland

most limited liberalization. Abortion has also been blocked through guidelines
provided for healthcare professionals, as detailed by Rowan and Simpson in
this volume. Whilst the most restrictive guidelines were replaced in 2016, their
legacy is perceived to have a longer-term chilling effect on health practice in
abortion care.
Between 2007 and 2015, the Assembly had an All-Party pro-life group.
All-Party groups provide a forum by which MLAs and outside organizations
and individuals can meet to discuss shared interests on a particular cause or
subject. All-Party groups have no formal role in policy making and do not have
the powers of an Assembly Committee (niassembly.gov.uk, 2020); however,
they provide a useful forum for external groups to present their views to MLAs
and for cross-party discussions to take place. The secretariat to the All-Party
pro-life group was initially provided by the DUP, and then by Bernadette
Smyth, founding member of Precious Life. Precious Life is an anti-choice
group which is well-known in NI for its visible anti-choice campaigning and
protests outside sexual health clinics. During the operation of the all-party
group, it held private meetings at the Assembly, access to which had to be
approved by Smyth.
MLAs repeatedly state that they oppose the intervention of Westminster into
abortion law (Thomson, this volume). For example, Jim Wells of the DUP noted
that he supported the 2006 St Andrews Agreement (an agreement between the
British and Irish governments and NI’s political parties to restore the NIA in
2007 and stating Sinn Féin’s support of the Police Service of NI as it would enable
policing and justice powers to be devolved to the region therefore putting the
control of abortion law within the hands of the Assembly (Tonge et al., 2014).
The rejection of Westminster intervention was also stated clearly in debates
leading up to decriminalization, with leader of the DUP, Arlene Foster, sending
an open letter to the Secretary of State stating, ‘the DUP along with other parties
believe the Assembly chamber is the appropriate place to deal with abortion’
(BBC News, 2019a).
Even after changes were established, members of the Assembly attempted
to block their enactment. Despite the Assembly not sitting for almost three
years, Unionist parties triggered the Assembly’s recall through a petition with
the intent to pass legislation in the form of a Defence of the Unborn Child Bill
2019. MLAs were told the Assembly could not do any business until a speaker
was elected with cross-community backing, which became impossible when the
SDLP left the chamber. Since the regulations drafted by the NIO at the end of
March 2020 came into force, access has not been guaranteed. The Department
 Power-Sharing and Patriarchy 21

of Health delayed granting approval to health trusts to provide services despite

trusts statement that they were ready to provide services. Telemedicine which
was rolled out in the rest of the UK in response to COVID-19 restrictions in
travel was not approved for NI. This resulted in women continuing having to
travel to England during a pandemic. At the time of writing, abortion up to ten
weeks was available in most health trusts, but after ten weeks access routes are
less clearly defined (Bloomer, 2020). In June 2020 the Assembly debated and
passed a motion disagreeing with the legalization of abortion on the grounds of
(non-fatal) foetal anomaly.
As this section has set out, the role of the Assembly in abortion law reform
has been obstructive to any change and has attempted to roll back progress made
in other forums. However, there is evidence to suggest that party positions have
more plurality regarding abortion and that the power sharing model has allowed
a diversity of positions on abortion to come forward. The following section will
detail developments on political discourse on abortion.

Talking about abortion: Political discourse in the Assembly

Debates that have taken place in the NIA highlight the shape that political
discourse has taken on abortion and its contribution to the intransigency
of legal reform. The majority of debate has taken an anti-abortion stance
based on abortion myths and misinformation, arguments about religion and
morals, the positioning of foetal rights against women’s rights, positioning
women’s rights against disability rights and presenting a perception of women
needing to access abortion as being vulnerable and in need of protection. For
more detailed discussions on abortion mythology, see Pierson and Bloomer
(2018), and on discussions of the discourse of rights see Pierson and Bloomer
(2017). This section will outline three key discourses in the NIA which
contribute to its contemporary opposition to reform; firstly, the positioning
of NI as different from Britain on its views on abortion, second, the emotive
use of foetal rights arguments to oppose abortion and thirdly the notion
that the NIA is protecting women by limiting abortion. These themes can
be internationally contextualized and contribute to continued stigmatization
and difficulty of having open and evidence-based discussions in the political
realm.
As noted above, a cross-party argument, often repeated, is that any change
to NI’s abortion laws should come from the NIA. For example, in the most
22 Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland

recent 2020 debate on the motion to oppose abortion for non-fatal foetal
anomaly the DUP consistently referred to ‘constitutional indignities’ and
‘constitutional abuses’ in reference to abortion regulations. This suggests that
Westminster has overreached its powers but fails to consider that the NIA
had not sat for almost three years prior to decriminalization. In addition, it
assumes that no power continues to rest at Westminster for NI. However, the
UK is the signatory to CEDAW and as such has a duty to ensure human rights
compliance; with no action taken by the Assembly, Westminster had a duty to
act (Pierson et al., 2018).
Other means by which MLAs attempt to distance NI is through arguments
of difference, with references to the peace process or the special circumstances
of NI having halted debate in the past. Distinguishing NI via its ethno-
national status is an attempt to use misunderstandings of NI in Westminster to
delegitimize any actions taken there. For example, in the 2020 debate, Delores
Kelly from the SDLP notes the overreach of the British government and the
‘right to life of unborn Irish children’ (Hansard, 2020). Weaponizing identity
is a strategy that has consistently been used to oppose abortion, the DUP have
even called on an all-Ireland identity based on opposition to abortion (prior to
Repeal of the Eighth Amendment). These arguments position the Assembly as
the only legitimate forum to amend abortion law through their positioning of
Westminster as unknowledgeable and acting beyond their powers.
A consistent argument throughout political debate attempts a balancing of
rights in abortion. This argument developed globally both from a recognition of
the legitimacy of rights-based defences and a need to provide a counterargument,
coupled with the development of high-quality ultrasound which has enabled
the presentation of the idea of foetal personhood through graphic imagery.
This positions pregnant women and the foetus in an adversarial relationship,
where women need to be regulated in order to protect the foetus. Women are
present and yet not present in foetal rights arguments, whose imagery depends
on the erasure of women and the foetus as a free-floating independent being.
The moralistic position of the foetal rights argument posits the foetus as
morally equivalent to a rights-bearing person, that it is innocent and therefore
morally superior, and that choice-based arguments are inferior to the right to
life (Bloomer et al., 2018). Within debate in NI the phrase ‘unborn child’ is
used much more frequently than ‘foetus’. This also reflects Northern Irish anti-
abortion activism which uses slogans such as ‘Love Them Both’ and ‘Both Lives
Matter’. Politicians have also framed their foetal rights arguments as a moral
right, linked to religion or when lives lost in the conflict of NI are conflated
 Power-Sharing and Patriarchy 23

with lives lost through abortion. Such arguments are emotive and designed to
position anti-choice politicians as protectors:
Surely the most vulnerable life in our society is the life of the unborn child.
Those boys and girls have nobody to speak for them. They are totally reliant on
what we do in this House. They are protected by the cross-community will of
Northern Ireland. However, a democratic deceit has been perpetrated against
them … Is it not a shame that, in our United Kingdom, the most dangerous place
for a child is in its mother’s womb?
(Jonathan Bell, DUP, Hansard, 2013, p. 23)

An extension of this argument can be seen in arguments around the right to

life of the foetus with regard to disability rights. This was the focus of the most
recent debate which attempted to roll back regulations from Westminster. Such
arguments are of course complex, and many disability rights advocates are not
against abortion per se but oppose abortion in cases of what can be termed
‘weak eugenics’ that is ‘promoting technologies of reproductive selection via
non-coercive individual choices’ (Shakespeare quoted in Sharp and Earle, 2002).
However, in political debate the case of disability has been raised by those who
are against abortion under any circumstances, and it appears that disability is
simply another means by which to begin to restrict abortion completely.
Alongside foetal rights is a growing propensity to position women seeking
abortion as in some way ‘vulnerable’ or ‘at risk’. Global anti-abortion discourse
argues that ‘restrictions on legal abortion are necessary to stop weak and
irrational women from making bad decisions that harm them’ (Cannold,
2002, p. 174). This switched tactics from previously positioning those seeking
abortion as bad or selfish, to now as weak or vulnerable. Northern Irish political
debate reflects these trends as words such as ‘vulnerable’ and ‘protect’ are used
more often, particularly debates attempting to limit provision of abortion from
private providers (a response to the opening of Marie Stopes International
in 2012), politicians here positioned themselves protecting women from
unscrupulous abortion providers. The change in tactics reflects a public
sentiment of sympathy towards those seeking abortion. This argument serves
to hide anti-woman sentiment behind a veneer of protection and reduction of
harm-based sentiment and positions politicians as protectors of women rather
than enablers of rights.
Outlining some prevalent anti-abortion discourses in NIA debate helps
contextualize anti-choice sentiment and attempts of politicians to restrict or roll
back abortion access. This is not to say that there has not been development
24 Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland

and more nuanced perspectives on abortion. The following section will detail
political party positions on abortion and their evolution, attempting to explain a
growing plurality of opinion and changes in policy.

‘The north is next’: Changing party positions and

dissenting voices, attitudes and opinions

As noted above, early discussions on abortion pre-devolution were rare, and

those after heavily permeated with anti-abortion viewpoints. Dissenting voices
in the political realm were rarely heard in debate, Anna Lo from the Alliance
Party being a notable exception. This served to ensure a largely cross-party
consensus on the position of the law remaining as it was and meant that parties
could also lobby Westminster as a group to ensure movement did not take place
at that level. However, this hegemonic position has recently been challenged,
with the number of dissenting voices becoming louder and the legal change
in the Republic of Ireland arguably forcing the hand of nationalist parties to
maintain all-Ireland coherence in policy.
The DUP have the clearest party policy on abortion, in that they oppose legal
reform under any circumstances and have always done so. Despite their core
political project being maintenance of NI’s position in the United Kingdom and
their lobbying of Westminster to ensure NI maintains the same legal position
as Britain, for example on issues such as Brexit, they are happy to maintain
this legislative difference. Many of their members are vocally anti-abortion, for
example the Former Health Minister, MLA Jim Wells, is on record as stating his
opposition to abortion even in cases of rape, he has also compared abortion to
the Holocaust (Pierson and Bloomer, 2018). The party also has strong links with
anti-abortion groups such as ‘Precious Life’, and religious groups such as the
Caleb Foundation and the Evangelical Alliance, religious ‘think-tanks’ linked
to evangelical Protestantism who have moved their political projects from
constitutional issues towards moral and social ones such as abortion and same-
sex marriage (Ganiel, 2006).
The UUP do not apply a party whip on the issue of abortion and party
leadership appears keen to maintain that approach. This allows representatives
to vote according to their ‘conscience’ on abortion. The position of their
elected representatives falls across the political spectrum, with some presenting
themselves as pro-life, others pro-choice in limited circumstances and some
fully and openly in support of women’s rights. Survey research of the UUP and
 Power-Sharing and Patriarchy 25

its members indicates that their membership is also in support of liberalization

of abortion laws with over 50 per cent supporting that ‘abortion should be
permitted up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, subject to medical approval, in line with
the law in England and Wales’ (Hennessey et al., 2018).
Sinn Féin’s policy on abortion has been ambiguous. At the 2015 Ard Fheis a
motion was passed to allow for abortion in cases of ‘fatal foetal anomaly’. A NI
council member, Anne Brolly, resigned after this decision. Sinn Féin have also
stated that they do not wish to extend the 1967 Abortion Act to NI as it is a piece
of British legislation (Pierson, 2018). Within political debate, Sinn Féin use a
rhetoric of empathy and emphasize the vulnerability of women across Ireland,
more recently they have positioned abortion as an issue of ‘modern healthcare’.
After the Repeal of the Eighth Amendment to the Irish constitution in 2018,
the image of Sinn Féin leader in the south, Mary-Lou McDonald, and leader
in the north, Michelle O’Neill, holding up the sign ‘the north is next’ became
emblematic of the bid for legislative change on both sides of the border. Party
policy was changed after a vote in 2018 to support abortion within ‘a limited
gestational period’, enabling the party to support change in the south and
promote change in the north. This spurred the resignation of some members
and the creation of a new party, Aontú, which puts protection of the right to life
as one of its core political goals. However, party policy across the island does
not support abortion in cases of non-fatal foetal anomaly allowing them to put
forward a similar motion to the DUP on restriction of abortion on these grounds.
The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) openly position themselves
as a ‘pro-life’ party and various members have aligned themselves with anti-
choice groups such as Precious Life; however, the party does not apply a whip
on the issue and similarly to the UUP allows members to vote on conscience.
Days before the referendum in the Republic, the SDLP held a special conference
on abortion. The party stated that the conference not only reaffirmed their
position as a pro-life party but also supported freedom of conscience voting
for elected representatives. Politicians from the SDLP have more overtly linked
their position on abortion as being part of their Catholic faith, indicating a
form of nationalism built upon and intertwined with religious convictions.
Representatives of the SDLP also draw on their status as upholders of civil rights
and their stance of non-violence to contextualize their views on abortion.
The Alliance Party also has a position on conscience on abortion, Alliance
has grown and in fact doubled its vote in 2019 to become the third largest party
in NI (Tonge, 2020). The rise of a centrist party which claims no position on
constitutional issues illustrates the growing number of people who either do not
26 Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland

align with nationalism or unionism or perhaps do not see it as their primary

identifying identity, but also an electorate who wish to progress social issues
(this is also illustrated in the growth of parties such as The Green Party and
People before Profit – both openly pro-choice parties). The Alliance Party are
the only one who have attempted to advance legislation on abortion, their leader
David Ford as Justice Minister convened a consultation on abortion and put
forward amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill in 2016 to allow for abortion
in cases of FFA and sexual crime (both were voted down). The current leader
Naomi Long has also stated she is in favour of decriminalization of abortion
with strict gestational limits.
Party positions on abortion have mostly moved to more liberal positions,
this coupled with the changes in the Republic of Ireland has destroyed the view
that NI is opposed to abortion and that abortion is anti-Irish. The growth of
dissenting and plural voices about abortion highlights one of the benefits of
power-sharing, that with wider representation smaller parties that don’t conform
to the two communities’ model have the potential to be heard and grow and to
challenge dominant narratives. However, pro-choice voices have not reached a
majority level yet and as such this chapter will conclude by considering what, if
any, role the NIA could have played in abortion law reform.

The lowest-common denominator approach: What change

could have come from Stormont?

The common refrain from NI politicians is that change on abortion law should
come from Stormont. But what form would this change take? This chapter has
attempted to outline the action taken by NI politicians, their positions when
discussing abortion and the evolution of party policy on the issue. Intertwined
with this is the role of structures of governance on furthering or limiting
progressive positions on gender-related policy.
The outcome of this is relatively bleak. In December 2021 an attempt to restrict
abortion in cases on non-fatal foetal anomaly was rejected by a small majority of
45 to 42 votes. The debate exposing that many political representatives continue
to oppose abortion on wider grounds than were being debated. As such, it is clear
that this is not the end of the abortion debate in NI and perhaps the beginning of
a long battle to ensure that the rights gained are not regressed.
Devolution coupled with power-sharing has not been positive for women in
NI. Whilst the number of women represented in the Assembly has increased, the
 Power-Sharing and Patriarchy 27

experiences and perspectives of women who seek or have sought abortion are
not being adequately represented nor their rights fought for. Public opinion polls
on abortion are increasingly showing more liberal attitudes towards abortion
and a public will for change; political opinion in this case appears to fall behind
and out of step with the public. The increasing number of politicians supporting
more liberal legislation (in a variety of forms) is growing, but this growth is not
enough yet to ensure a majority.
In this environment, it is likely that abortion would continue to be an issue
that the Assembly would struggle to even form a lowest common denominator
agreement on; if legislation was to be passed, it would affect a minority of
women – those experiencing a diagnosis of fatal foetal anomaly or those who
have been a victim of sexual crime. As such, legislation passed by the Assembly
would ensure that most women seeking abortion would continue to travel to
England or seek abortion illegally in NI. In this case, it is likely that women’s
rights in NI could only have been met by the shift in power and responsibility
back to the Westminster legislature and that future action in the Assembly may
be to attempt to reverse any progress that has been made.

Note

1 Alex Salmond in a House of Commons debate on devolution and abortion law HC

Deb 31 March 1998 vol 309 c1109
28
 ­4

The role of human rights organizations

Les Allamby

Introduction

In July 2019 for the first time anywhere, the recommendations of an inquiry
from a human rights treaty monitoring body were adopted in their entirety
by a Parliament and placed in legislation. Article 9 (1) of the Northern Ireland
(Executive Formation etc.) Act 2019 provided that ‘the Secretary of State must
ensure that the recommendations in paragraphs 85 and 86 of the CEDAW report
are implemented in respect of Northern Ireland’. How did this happen and what
role did human rights and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission
play in this change in the law?
Of course, like any significant legal and social reform, the outcome was the
result of the work of many including clinical organizations, family-planning
providers, abortion-support organizations, women groups, trade unions, human
rights and other NGOs, politicians and not least, women who bravely raised their
voices and told their stories. The work done by organizations was combined with
other circumstances including the reform of abortion law elsewhere in Ireland,
the suspension of devolved institutions in NI and legal challenges that helped
pave the way for the reform through Westminster. This chapter focuses on the
role of the Commission while recognizing the role of many others who fought in
hostile circumstances who should take the credit for enabling reform.

The role of the Commission and human rights standards

The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission was created as part of the
Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement in 1998. The Commission’s statutory duties
include keeping under review the adequacy and effectiveness of law and practice
30 Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland

to protect human rights. This sits alongside a role to advise the Secretary of State
for NI and the NI Executive and Northern Ireland Assembly (NIA) on legislative
and other measures, to be taken to enable human rights. The specific powers
include taking legal action, undertaking research and educational activities.
The Commission is part of a global network of national human rights
institutions, which must conform to the UN General Assembly resolution
48/134 (the Paris Principles) which include being independent, pluralist and
having a sufficient mandate and resources to effectively carry out its role. The
platform from which the Commission operates is the international and regional
human rights standards created through treaties ratified by the UK government.
While the Council of Europe’s regional treaty the European Convention on
Human Rights has been incorporated into domestic law through the Human
Rights Act, other treaties including the UN treaties have not. In practice, while
the courts will draw on, for example UN human rights treaties in certain
circumstances they are not directly enforceable as a matter of law. Instead, the UN
Treaty monitoring bodies periodically examine the UK government’s adherence
to the standards through reviews as part of a wider cycle of assessment faced by
those member states who have ratified the individual treaties. The UN treaty
monitoring reporting procedure looks at the record of the UK government in
implementing treaties having considered written and oral evidence provided by
the UK government, national human rights institutions, human rights NGOs
and others. The treaty monitoring body publishes its concluding observations
highlighting progress and deficiencies with recommendations on what needs
doing to fulfil the obligations contained within the individual treaty. The process
is part of the wider work undertaken to monitor the human rights record of
individual states. Among the other powers open to UN Treaty monitoring
bodies is the ability to launch inquiries, for example under Article 8 of the
Optional Protocol of CEDAW; the Committee may conduct an inquiry where it
receives reliable information of grave or systematic violations of human rights.
This is done in co-operation of the State party. The UK government agreed to
the Optional Protocol in December 2004.
The Commission actively engages in the monitoring processes on individual
treaties along with a vibrant voluntary and community sector. The conclusions
of the treaty bodies is one pillar that drives its work forward.
The recommendations for change varied between UN monitoring
committees and evolved over time. By way of illustration, the UN Convention
on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recommendations focussed on the
question of equality of treatment within disability in the rest of the UK and was
 The Role of Human Rights Organizations 31

the subject of significant debate as to its meaning and whether it cohered with
recommendations of other committees. This alongside concerns in other global
contexts led the CEDAW and UNCRPD treaty monitoring bodies to look at the
possibility of producing an agreed joint statement on the issue.
The Commission met with the chair and vice chair of the Committee on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities in March 2018 during the drafting process
to emphasize the need for clarity around the compatibility of equal rights
and non-discrimination in disability and a woman’s right to personal and
bodily autonomy. The meeting included a discussion on how the Committee’s
conclusions had been utilized by the (then) Attorney General to argue in court
that abortion law in NI was human rights compliant. On 29 August 2018, the
UNCRPD and UNCEDAW committees issued a joint statement ‘Guaranteeing
sexual and reproductive health and rights for all women in particular women
with disabilities’. In its conclusion, the joint statement outlined
In all efforts to implement their obligations regarding sexual and reproductive
health and rights including access to safe and legal abortion, the Committee
call upon State parties to take a human rights-based approach that safeguards
the reproductive choice and autonomy of all women, including women with
disabilities.

The statement sought to clarify the two bodies position on abortion law reform
as compatible with their specific roles to promote non-discrimination.

The Commission’s High Court legal challenge

Shortly after the CEDAW committee’s conclusions in July 2013 calling for the
decriminalization of abortion, the Commission wrote to the Department of
Health to offer its advice on recently issued guidance on abortion for health and
social care staff. The guidance had taken almost a decade to produce following
several legal challenges. The Commission also wrote to the Departments
of Health and Justice to outline its concern that the law on abortion was not
human rights compliant by failing to provide access in cases of fatal and severe
foetal abnormality and for victims of sexual crimes. In reply, the Department for
Justice outlined its intention to introduce shortly a consultation paper to allow
for terminations in cases of fatal foetal abnormality and to consider the issue of
abortion for victims of sexual crimes. Ultimately, it took almost a year before the
Department of Justice issued its consultation paper in October 2014. It was clear
32 Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland

from both private discussions and correspondence that the recommendation

from CEDAW was not being considered.
As a result, the Commission sought a legal opinion on the question of whether
the abortion law in NI was compatible with the European Convention on Human
Rights. The Convention had been effectively incorporated in domestic law
through the Human Rights Act and was the clear vehicle for a legal challenge in
the courts in NI. The Commission also raised the question of compatibility with
the CEDAW obligations though this never became a central feature of the legal
submissions or subsequent judgements. From the outset, the issue was managed
as a human rights issue and that alone. On receipt of the legal opinion outlining
there was an arguable basis for a legal challenge the Commission held long and
robust discussions as to whether we should embark on a legal case or wait and see
how the consultation process unfolded. A significant majority of Commissioners
adopted to press ahead with a judicial review. The challenge lodged in December
2014 was based on whether Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences against the Person
Act 1861 and Section 25 of the Criminal Justice Act (NI) 1945 which prohibited
access to terminations was contrary to the Convention and Human Rights Act
in cases of serious malformation of the foetus or pregnancy resulting from rape
or incest. The application was made in the Commission’s own name without a
victim as there was in practical terms little chance of a woman being willing to
take legal action. Moreover, one victim, if found would only have addressed her
circumstances and not the wider systemic issue, which is why having the power
to take a case without a victim is important.
The Attorney General joined the application against the Department of
Justice following the issue of a Notice of Devolution. In addition, several others
intervened both in support of and against the Commission’s challenge (Campbell,
this volume; Teggart and Rowan, this volume; see appendix for list of interveners).
While the case was not taken in an individual’s name, the legal papers
included the personal circumstances of Sarah Ewart and Ashleigh Topley who
were supported by Amnesty International and AfC, respectively (McKay, this
volume; Topley, this volume). In addition, anonymized personal stories were
submitted in an affidavit from Dawn Purvis in her role as head of the Marie
Stopes Clinic in Belfast. The case was heard in June 2015 and judgement given
on 30 November 2015.
Mr. Justice Horner held that the law on abortion in NI was not compatible with
human rights under Article 8 (the right to private and family life) and a woman’s
right to personal and bodily integrity in cases of fatal foetal abnormality and for
victims of sexual crimes. The challenge failed in cases of serious malformation of
 The Role of Human Rights Organizations 33

the foetus and under Article 3 (freedom of inhuman and degrading treatment)
and Article 14 (freedom from discrimination). The right of the Commission to
take a case without a victim was upheld, this right having been challenged by
both the Department of Justice and the Attorney General.
An interesting and often unheralded part of the judgement was the ruling given
on the common law position of whether the unborn have freestanding rights.
This was considered at paragraphs 96–109 where Mr. Justice Horner held that the
common law in NI was no different from England and Wales. In effect, a foetus has
no freestanding human rights of existence save for any rights being inextricably
linked to the rights of a pregnant woman. As the judge concluded, ‘the position
in Northern Ireland law can reasonably be summed up by concluding that the
unborn child does not enjoy a full “right to life” under Article 2. However, pre-
natal life does have some statutory protection in respect of some of its attributes’.
This analysis remained undisturbed in the subsequent Court of Appeal and
Supreme Court judgements and remains the settled law on the issue in NI. In
contrast, the European Court of Human Rights has never ruled definitively on
when life begins, concluding instead that it is a matter which falls within the
discretion of individual countries.
At a separate hearing, the judge considered the question of legal relief. The
1861 Act is primary legislation and the 1945 Act is secondary legislation. Under
the Human Rights Act the High Court and above can only issue a ‘declaration
of incompatibility’ except where it is possible to interpret the working of the
legislation in a way that gives effect to human rights. Articles 58 and 59 were
unequivocal in terms of criminalizing and prohibiting abortion and the wording
could not be interpreted to mean that terminations were allowed in certain
circumstances. As a result, the judge issued a declaration of incompatibility
under Section 4 of the Human Rights Act – in effect, he declared the law was
not human rights compliant in cases of fatal foetal abnormality and for victims
of sexual crimes, and it was a matter for the legislature to resolve. At the time
of the High Court’s final judgement in December 2015 the issue fell to the NI
Executive and Assembly.

Court of Appeal and Supreme Court legal challenges

The Attorney General and Department of Justice appealed the High Court’s
decision while the Commission cross-appealed the ruling that the current
law was human right compliant in cases of serious malformation of the foetus
34 Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland

and that the law was not a violation of Articles 3 and 14 of the Convention.
In effect, all the legal issues remained in play before the Court of Appeal. The
case was heard in June 2016 by three appeal court judges. Judgement was given
a year later in June 2017. The three judges unanimously upheld the appeal
issuing individual judgements. Each judgement took a differing nuanced view
nonetheless, all three appeal court judges agreed that this was a matter for the
legislature and not the courts. In essence, this was captured by Lord Justice
Weatherup at paragraph 178 of the judgement where he held ‘The Court has
to consider whether in all the circumstances it is institutionally appropriate
to intervene in respect of the legislation. This judgement may inform further
consideration of the issues. As the matter will receive further consideration in
the Assembly, I would conclude that it is not appropriate to intervene at this
stage’. The Court of Appeal upheld the right of the Commission to take the case
in its own name without a victim.
The ball now fell back to into the Commission’s court and based on the
international standards which continued to evolve, the Commisssion decided to
appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. The case was heard in October 2017
with the largest number of interveners in any Supreme Court hearing to date.
The Supreme Court delivered its judgement on 7 June 2018 with five of the
seven Supreme Court justices giving their own judgement. The Supreme Court
justices by a majority of four to three held that the Commission did not have
a legal standing to bring a case without a victim, based on the interpretation
of the statutory powers given to the Commission under Sections 69–71 of the
NI Act 1998. Normally, the Supreme Court would go no further and leave the
substantive legal point untouched. However, in a highly unusual move all five
judges set out their views on the question of whether the law on abortion in
NI was compatible with human rights. On a majority of five to two and four
to three, respectively, the Supreme Court held that the law breached the right
to family and private life in cases of fatal foetal abnormality and for victims of
sexual crimes. Two judges held that the law reached the Article 3 threshold of
amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment while several other judges
reserved their views in the absence of facts of an individual applicant. The
judgement amounted to indicative legal opinions of the Supreme Court rather
than binding judgements. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court’s concern about
the state of the law of abortion in NI could not have been made clearer. It
was perhaps best encapsulated by Lord Mance, one of the judges who held
the Commission did not have standing to take a case. He concluded at
paragraph 135 that
 The Role of Human Rights Organizations 35

I­ am in short satisfied that the present legislative position in Northern Ireland is

untenable and intrinsically disproportionate in excluding from any possibility
of abortion, pregnancies involving fatal foetal abnormality or due to rape or
incest, the present law clearly needs radical reconsideration. Those responsible
for ensuring the compatibility of Northern Ireland law with Convention rights
will no doubt recognise and take account of these conclusions, at as early a time
as possible, by considering whether and how to amend the law, in light of the
ongoing suffering being caused by it as well as the likelihood that a victim of
the existing law would have standing to pursue similar proceedings to reach
similar conclusions and to obtain a declaration of incompatibility in relation to
the 1861 Act.

The verdict on the Commission’s lack of standing meant no ‘declaration of

incompatibility’ could be issued though the judgement provided a strong
indicative opinion as to the unsatisfactory state of the current law and its
incompatibility with human rights. The judgement was substantially utilized
in a subsequent case taken by Sarah Ewart that the law would continue to
prejudice her human rights should she suffer a further fatal foetal abnormality
in any future pregnancy (McKay, this volume). Mrs. Justice Keegan ruled that
the law was not compatible with human rights in those circumstances though
by the time of her ruling the Northern Ireland Executive Formations Act 2019
had passed, so there was no necessity to issue a declaration of incompatibility.
The decision to prosecute the mother who supplied pills to her pregnant fifteen-
year-old daughter was also subsequently dropped as a result of legal reform.

Other developments

The legal challenge provided a sharpened focus on the issue of abortion law
reform each time it was heard in court and judgement were delivered. However,
it wasn’t the only legal and political development.
In NI in October 2014 the Department of Justice issued its consultation on
the criminal law on abortion covering fatal foetal abnormality and the victims
of sexual crime. The Department recommended a change in the law to allow for
terminations in cases of fatal foetal abnormality and sought views on the need for
similar reform in cases of sexual crimes. In April 2015, the Department published
a summary of the responses and its proposals concluding there had been a case
made for limited change to the law in cases of fatal foetal abnormality. On sexual
crimes, the Department decided not to propose any changes. Proposals for
36 Decriminalizing Abortion in Northern Ireland

limited reform were developed by the Department; however, the changes had to
be agreed by the NI Executive and they floundered there (Pierson, this volume).
In February 2016 several amendments were tabled to the Justice (No2) Bill
before the NIA from the Alliance Party and the Green Party. The amendments
addressed substantively many of the issues contained in the Commission’s legal
challenge. All the amendments were comprehensively defeated. The debate
was, however, a catalyst for the then leader of the DUP, Arlene Foster, to ask
the minister of health to establish a working group to examine how the issue of
fatal foetal abnormality could be addressed. Following the Assembly election in
May 2016, the then ministers of Health (Michelle O’Neill) and Justice (Claire
Sugden) set up an interdepartmental working group to look at the issue of fatal
foetal abnormality. This initiative had gained the approval of the NI Executive.
The report was submitted to both ministers on 11 October 2016 though not
published until 25 April 2018. Among the findings was
the overall recognition by those health professionals who spoke to the group that
the existing legal framework prevents them from fully meeting their duty of care
to all women in this situation and therefore denies those women who wish to
terminate their pregnancy access to proper standards of healthcare. In summary,
health professionals considered the current situation to be professionally
untenable.

The group proposed a change to the law within the parameters of its terms of
reference, namely, to examine only the issue of fatal foetal abnormality. The
delay in publishing the report has never been explained.
Elsewhere, in Ireland, the pace of change quickened. In September 2017,
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced a referendum on whether to Repeal the
Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution giving equal value to the life of the
unborn foetus and pregnant woman. The constitutional and legislative provisions
were discussed at a Citizens Assembly and an Oireachtas committee both of
which recommended substantial reform. On 25 May 2018 the Irish people voted
by just over a two-thirds majority to Repeal the Eighth Amendment. Law reform
swiftly followed and in December 2018, the Health (Regulation of Termination
of Pregnancy) Act was passed allowing abortion during the first twelve weeks
of pregnancy and later in circumstances of fatal foetal abnormality or where the
life or health of the woman was a risk (Roberts, volume 2; Gillum and Weiderud,
volume 2).
Legal and policy developments were not confined to both parts of Ireland.
In Britain in June 2017, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by a majority
 The Role of Human Rights Organizations 37

of three to two against a challenge to the Department for Health for failing to
provide NHS funding in England for abortions provided to women travelling
from NI. The Minister for Women and Equalities Justine Greening announced
that such funding would be provided and in a later statement, that funding
would be extended to cover travel and accommodation costs. The first statement
was made in the week judgement was given in the Court of Appeal and the
second the week of the Supreme Court hearing (Creasy and Sanquest, this
volume; Thomson, this volume). The governments in Scotland and Wales also
followed suit.
The House of Commons Women and Equalities Select Committee then
launched its own enquiry into the law in September 2018, holding oral sessions
in NI and London. The Commission met the committee in Belfast and gave
evidence in February 2019. Among the conclusions of the committee’s report
published in April 2019 was that while respecting the principle of devolution
and the responsibility of the NIA to legislate on matters of abortion law, the
UK government retains responsibility to meet its international human rights
obligations and devolution cannot justify a failure to meet those standards
(House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee, 2019). The Select
Committee also concluded that the UK government needed to address breaches
of women’s rights identified in the CEDAW inquiry where there is no government
in NI to take this action. By the time the UK government responded in August
2019, the House of Commons had passed an amendment from Stella Creasy MP
to the Northern Ireland Executive Formation Bill to implement the CEDAW
committee’s inquiry recommendations in full.

The CEDAW inquiry

In December 2010 FPA, NIWEP and AfC made a submission to the CEDAW
committee under the Optional Protocol to the Convention that the restrictions
on access to abortion for women and girls and the criminalization of abortion
under the law amounted to grave and systematic violation of human rights.
In 2015 CEDAW decided to undertake the inquiry and the UK government
consented. The Commission facilitated the inquiry’s confidential visit and
meetings with a range of stakeholders with a plethora of views. During the
inquiry visit, Dr Caroline Gannon, one of only two paediatric pathologists in NI
resigned after thirty years’ service and went public with her concerns including
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Azalea at
Sunset Gap
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Azalea at Sunset Gap

Author: Elia Wilkinson Peattie

Illustrator: Josef Pierre Nuyttens

Release date: May 30, 2017 [eBook #54813]

Language: English

Credits: This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AZALEA AT

SUNSET GAP ***
This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler
 OTHER BOOKS IN

THE BLUE RIDGE SERIES

By Elia W. Peattie

AZALEA. Clean and wholesome, but lacking nothing in liveliness.

Azalea is a winsome mountain lassie who has made many friends
among girl readers.
ANNIE LAURIE AND AZALEA. Continuing Mrs. Peattie’s success in
“Azalea,” hailed by reviewers and readers as a “first-class piece of
fiction any boy or girl between nine and ninety will enjoy.”
Each story complete and individual, but each dealing with the people
and the locality Mrs. Peattie’s charming stories have endeared to
young readers.
 AZALEA AT
SUNSET GAP

BY
ELIA W. PEATTIE
Author of Azalea; Annie Laurie and Azalea; etc.
 Illustrations by
Joseph Pierre Nuyttens

The Reilly & Britton Co.

Chicago

Copyright, 1914
by
The Reilly & Britton Co.

Azalea at Sunset Gap

 CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Perfect Chaperon 9

II Passengers for Bee Tree 29
III Sunset Gap 47
IV “Say! Teacher!” 67
V Rowantree Hall 87
VI Little Brother 103
VII “Doing Good” 118
VIII The War 138
IX The Rescue 156
X The Rescue, Continued 172
XI Keefe 192
XII The Blab Boy 207
XIII The Hermit Thrush 225
XIV The Rebel 242
XV New Hopes 261
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

“So I lost David,” whispered Mary Cecily; “I lost my little Frontispiece

brother.”
“I an artist? Mercy, no,” said Azalea. “I’m nothing—just 64
a girl.”
There was Paralee, dragging a gaunt woman to the 166
door. “Tell ’em to ’light, ma, and come in,” she begged
Keefe lifted a languid hand. “I’ve been wanting to tell 230
you for a long time,” he said
 CHAPTER I
THE PERFECT CHAPERON

Three girls, Azalea McBirney, Annie Laurie Pace and Carin Carson
rode slowly along the red clay road that led no-where-in-particular.
In fact, these friends were bound for No-Where-In-Particular, and
the way there was lined on both sides with blossoming dogwood, as
white as snow. There were snow-white clouds in the sky, too,
against a background of glorious blue. But the balm in the air
suggested anything rather than snow. It blew back and forth,
carrying with it delicious perfumes of the blossoming shrubs that
grew by the roadside and within the wood, and touching the cheek
like a caress.
The horses seemed to be enjoying themselves almost as much as
the girls. They stepped daintily, throwing back their heads as if they
would be pleased if their mistresses would give them leave to be off
and away down the road, and expanding their nostrils to catch the
scents of the spring-awakened earth. But their mistresses were too
deeply engaged in conversation just then to grant them their desire.
“You see,” the fairest of them was saying—the one the others called
Carin—“I don’t really want to go to Europe with father and mother
this time. It isn’t as if they were going to stay in one place. They’ll
be traveling the whole time, because, you see, father is going on
business, and mother is going along to keep him company. It
wouldn’t be very pleasant, would it, to hear mother saying: ‘And now
what in the world will we do with Carin to-day?’ Really, you know, I
wouldn’t at all enjoy having my name changed to ‘Little-Carin-in-the-
Way.’”
The tallest girl, Annie Laurie Pace, laughed rather enviously.
“Think of giving up a European trip for that!” she cried.
“Oh, indeed, I’ll be only too thankful to go on some other occasion,
Annie Laurie, when there’s time to see things or to study.
Remember, I’ve gone twice already; once over the same ground that
father and mother are going over this time. The next time, I hope
to stay and study, but this summer I want to follow the plan we
made last summer and go up into the mountains and teach school.”
“Oh, do you really, Carin?” cried Azalea, the third girl. “I’ve
wondered and wondered if you’d remember about that! Would your
father and mother let you?”
“That remains to be seen. One can always ask. Do you think Ma
McBirney would give you permission, Azalea?”
“Oh, I think she would. The trouble with Ma McBirney is that she’s
likely to say ‘yes’ whether my going makes it hard for her or not.”
“But didn’t she plan,” broke in Annie Laurie, “to visit her cousin down
Calhoun way? Pa McBirney will be going too, won’t he?”
“I don’t think he could leave the stock and the farm. But you see, I
thought maybe Mother McBirney would want to take me along to—”
“To show off her new daughter,” laughed Carin. “I don’t blame her.”
“I never meant anything of the sort,” protested Azalea, coloring.
“But of course, having picked me up by the roadside the way she did
—like a poor stray kitten, you may say—perhaps she would like her
relatives to see that I wasn’t—” Azalea hesitated again, with the
mocking eyes of her friends on her.
“That you weren’t what?” demanded Carin teasingly.
But Annie Laurie interrupted with one of the practical remarks for
which she was celebrated.
“It’s all very well for you girls to talk of going off to the mountains to
teach school,” she said, “but have you any idea of where you’ll go
and whom you’ll teach?”
“We have a very clear idea,” answered Carin. “We’ll go back to
Sunset Gap, where we were last summer, and where they need help
about as badly as they can. I was talking with Azalea’s minister, Mr.
Summers, and he says he doesn’t know of any place where the
people are in greater need of schooling than they are there. You
remember the place, Annie Laurie, don’t you? We stopped there
overnight when we were on our camping trip. It took us a long time
to get there by wagon, but this time we’ll take the train as far as Bee
Tree and drive only the last fifteen miles. Mr. Summers says he
knows a man who will meet us at the station.”
“You’ve quite made up your mind to go, haven’t you?” asked Annie
Laurie. “What a girl you are, to be laying out all these plans without
telling anyone.”
“Oh, I haven’t done much,” protested Carin, “only, when I happened
to meet Mr. Summers, I talked it over with him. You see, there are
men and women up there on Dundee mountain who don’t even
know their letters, and teaching the children will be like carrying
civilization to them,” said Carin earnestly, meaning very much more
than she said but trusting her sympathetic friends to understand.
“It’s the very kind of work that I want to do above everything else,”
declared Azalea with an earnestness no less than that of her friend.
“Oh, Annie Laurie, if we go, do come with us! You’d make the best
teacher of us all. You’re so firm, and you always think out
beforehand what you’re going to do.”
“The best way for me to live up to that fine reputation,” retorted
Annie Laurie, “is by staying at home. This is my last chance for
learning to manage my dairy, for Sam Disbrow, who has been taking
almost all of the responsibility, is leaving me next October for his two
years at Rutherford Academy. I’m so happy to think he’s going,
after all the disappointments and troubles he’s had.”
“But couldn’t your Aunt Adnah look after the dairy for a couple of
months? I thought she was a fine business woman,” Carin persisted.
“Oh, Carin, father’s death was a much greater shock to her than to
any of the rest of us. She oughtn’t to have much care. Anyway, the
dairy is my business now that father is gone, and I’m anxious to
learn every detail of it. I understand now about keeping the books,
but I am making a study of raising fodder and preserving it, and of
feeding the cattle and marketing the milk. Oh, it’s a huge
undertaking.”
Annie Laurie drew a deep breath.
“Yes, I suppose it is,” sighed Carin sympathetically. “Isn’t it queer,
when you come to think of it, that work had to be brought into the
world? Why weren’t we made like the birds, so that we could hop
around awhile, and sing awhile, and go to sleep under a nice dry
leaf?”
“Well, life isn’t that way,” said Annie Laurie in the solemn tones the
Paces sometimes used. “We have to work for what we get, and I’m
glad we do. Life is more interesting just the way it is.”
“I like to keep busy myself,” admitted Carin, “but if anyone came up
to me and told me that what I was doing was work, I believe I’d fall
in my tracks.” She gave a silvery laugh.
“After you’ve taught school a week, you’ll not need anyone to point
out that what you are doing is work,” Annie Laurie returned.
“Azalea, have you spoken yet to Pa and Ma McBirney about going?”
Azalea gave a little chuckle, half of amusement, half of affection, as
her friend spoke the names of the good mountain people who had
taken Azalea into their home when she was orphaned.
“Naturally, I haven’t,” she said, “because until this hour I didn’t know
Carin was really planning for it. And now I’ll have to approach the
subject cautiously. You know how it is with my dear pretend-
parents; they’re mountain people and don’t like to be frightened out
of their wits by having a question hurled at them. You have to lead
them up to it, like you would a nervous horse.”
“Don’t say ‘like you would,’ Azalea,” pleaded Carin. “You know Miss
Parkhurst never lets you. Say ‘as you would,’ Zalie.”
“As you would,” breathed Azalea meekly.
“Well,” said Annie Laurie, “it’s a grand plan and I hope it will come
true, though I’m not perfectly in love with the idea of having you
girls go off for the summer and leave me. But never mind that.
Let’s have a gallop!”
She flicked the reins on the neck of her pretty mare, and the animal,
delighted at the signal, bounded away as playfully as a kitten. Like
kittens, too, the ponies on which the other girls were mounted
followed after. As they rode, the blooms of the dogwood rained
about them and the laughter of the girls mingled with the nickering
of the horses.
At the ford, two miles down the valley, they drew rein.
“It’s time I was getting home,” said Annie Laurie. “How about you,
Azalea? Do you go up the mountain to-night?”
“No, I’m staying with Carin. That’s getting to be my habit on Friday
nights. Mother McBirney comes down Saturday for her trading, and
I meet her at the village and then we go home together.”
And now while they canter back down the lovely Valley of Lee in the
bland light of the closing day, let us tell something of their history to
such readers as have not met them before.
Azalea McBirney did not bear the name to which she was born. She
was Azalea Knox, the daughter of a ne’er-do-well son of a fine
family, and of a loving-hearted mother who had left her home and
friends for the sake of the man she married. The young mother had
fallen upon such evil days that at last, to provide her little girl with
the necessaries of life, she had traveled with a band of sorry actors
who journeyed from town to town in squalid, covered wagons. Sick
in body and shamed in spirit, she died on the road in front of the
mountain cabin where Thomas and Mary McBirney lived. They had
taken Azalea into their home, where she shared their care and
affection with Jim McBirney, their only living child.
Carin Carson was the daughter of Charles and Lucy Carson,
Northerners of wealth, who, having lost their three sons in a tragic
manner, had come to the beautiful little mountain town of Lee, to
forget, if possible, amid its beautiful surroundings and peaceful life,
the pain which had made their old home impossible to them. They
had interested themselves greatly in Azalea, had offered to make her
their adopted daughter, and upon her decision to stay with her
devoted foster mother, had given her the privilege of sharing with
Carin the excellent instruction received from Miss Parkhurst, Carin’s
governess.
A warm friendship had developed between the girls, and it was a
sharp disappointment to them when Mrs. Carson, who thought they
were growing too self-centered and indifferent to other young folk,
brought into their classroom Annie Laurie Pace, the daughter of the
dairy-man at Lee. It was only after Annie Laurie’s revolt from their
selfishness that they realized the need they had of her as well as the
privilege that it was to her—a girl too advanced for the district
school—to share their opportunities with them. Troubles came to
Annie Laurie. She lost her father and her fortune; but these
misfortunes only bound the three girls closer in “the triple alliance”
which they had formed. When, finally Annie Laurie’s fortune was
recovered by a singular chance, they settled down into happy
enjoyment of their school days.
The previous summer had found them together with their elders
upon a camping trip which was to remain in the minds of all of them
as one of the most delightful experiences of their lives. On this
excursion they had seen something of the lives of the mountaineers
of the Blue Ridge far back from the railroads and the main routes of
travel, and had resolved that at the first opportunity they would
return to pass on to these untaught, friendly, wistful folk some of the
knowledge which had been bountifully given them. But this thought
had slipped out of sight during the winter, for each girl had been
much occupied after her own fashion. Now, with the return of
summer, their thoughts turned naturally to the mountains. Back of
their desire to be useful to their less fortunate neighbors, was the
hunger for life in the open. They dreamed of the low-lying valleys
bathed in purple mist, of the flaming azalea burning on the higher
slopes, of the innumerable flowers springing to life along the
adventurous pathways, of the wild beauty of the storms, and the
ever-new miracle of sunrise and sunset.
Annie Laurie said good-bye, and Carin and Azalea turned in at the
great gate of the Shoals, the beautiful home built by Colonel
Atherton, the grandfather of Azalea. But Azalea entered it now, a
poor girl, the foster daughter of simple mountain folk, and it was
Carin’s parents who owned the fine old place and who lived there in
a very different sort of state from that which had obtained in Colonel
Atherton’s day. His thought had been all of his own indulgence and
glory. Charles Carson and his wife had their greatest happiness in
sharing their prosperity with others. They had built up a trade for
the handicraft of the mountain people, had lent a hand to several of
the enterprises in the town of Lee, and were the chief supporters of
a school for the mountain children.
When Mustard and Paprika, the ponies, had been led away by the
stable boy, the girls ran up the wide sweeping stairs to Carin’s room
to dress for dinner, and as they brushed their hair and changed their
frocks, they talked of how they could best approach their parents
with their rather madcap plan of going up into the mountains. In
the midst of their talk Mrs. Carson came into the room. She kissed
them in her gentle way and then held Azalea off with one white
jewelled hand, eyeing her with quizzical affection. Azalea returned
her look adoringly, for Carin’s mother was the girl’s ideal of what a
“beautiful lady” should be. The faint breath of violet perfume which
floated from her gowns, the satin sheen of her waving hair, her
indescribably soft and musical voice, her gestures, her laugh, all
served Azalea as the standard by which she measured charm in
women.
“You two have been plotting something,” declared the lady. “I can
read conspiracy in your faces—such a pair of telltale faces as you
have! Come! What is it?”
She drew Azalea closer to her, and the girl nestled her face for a
moment against Mrs. Carson’s soft cheek.
“It’s the mountains, mamma Carson,” she replied. “Carin and I want
to go up there and teach school the way we planned last summer.
You remember, don’t you?”
“So that’s it! Well, that’s not a very dark conspiracy. There wouldn’t
be any objection if we weren’t going abroad.”
“But it’s because you are going abroad, mamma,” cried Carin, “and
because I don’t really want to go, that this plan seems so—so
timely.”
Well, that was where the argument began. It was continued at the
dinner table; it was taken up the next day with the McBirneys as
soon as ever they showed their faces in the village, so that they
were not, after all, allowed to approach the subject in that gradual
and cautious manner advised by Azalea; it was carried to the
Reverend Absalom Summers and his wife Barbara. Even Jonathan
Summers, aged three, took a hand in it by pulling Azalea’s skirt and
saying: “Don’t go! Don’t go.”
Mr. Carson explained the situation to Mr. Summers after this fashion:
“It’s not that I am really so keen about taking Carin on this trip; and
I certainly have no objection to her making herself useful, but going
to live upon a wild mountain among wilder people doesn’t appeal to
me as the best thing for young girls to do. I doubt if it would be
safe.”
“Safe?” roared the Reverend Absalom, who had been a mountain
man himself and to whom the honor of the mountaineers was dear.
“Safe, Mr. Carson! Do you mean to insinuate that those girls
wouldn’t be as safe on Dundee Mountain as here in the town of
Lee? Are you not aware that women are honored and protected in
the remotest regions of our mountains?”
Mr. Carson enjoyed the outbreaks of his friend and was not at all put
out at having provoked one. His smile led Mr. Summers to suppose
that his eloquence had not been vigorous enough, so he resumed in
a louder tone of voice:
“We may do a good many things up on the mountain that aren’t
generally approved of by people living in the valleys; we may quarrel
among ourselves, and we may forget to pay the government the tax
on our whiskey; we may be lazy—we are lazy, if you like; we may
have different ideas of enjoyment from those you have, but if you
think there is any human panther among us who—”
Mr. Carson roared with laughter.
“No, Summers,” he cried, waving his hands to stop the stream of
protest, “I don’t think so—I don’t think anything. But you know
yourself that if the girls go up to Sunset Gap, they’ve got to have a
reliable, sensible, agreeable woman along with them. Now where
shall we find anyone like that? She must like roughing it, yet she’ll
have to be a refined, companionable woman. She must know how
to keep the pantry stocked, do the cooking, and yet be a restraint to
our impulsive young people. Such a person is hard to find.”
Mr. Summers had to admit that it was. His little wife, Barbara, who
wanted terribly to go with the girls but who was unwilling to leave
her preacher-man, had to admit it also, though she usually was the
first to think of the answer to any puzzle. Finally, Mr. Carson put it
this way:
“McBirney and his wife are willing Azalea should go, providing the
proper protectress is found. Mrs. Carson and I feel the same way.
Now, Summers, I ask you, isn’t it up to the girls to find the right
chaperon? Why not leave it in their hands? Let them produce a
woman of good sense, refinement, courage, love of adventure mixed
with judgment, well-educated, accustomed to killing snakes, friendly
to the mountain people, with a religious nature and a perfect
disposition—no objection to a little knowledge of medicine thrown in
—and they can go.”
The Rev. Absalom threw back his head and laughed, and his laugh
was entirely out of proportion to the size of the little house in which
he and his wife and his yellow-headed son lived and had their being,
and in which they were now entertaining their friends the Carsons
and the McBirneys.
But Carin and Azalea arose to the situation.
“It’s an hour before father and mother are to start up the mountain
for home,” said Azalea, taking the dare gayly; “so we’ve time to go
out and look around.”
“Why not?” demanded Carin. “I’m great at finding four-leaf clovers.
Why shouldn’t I find the perfect chaperon?” Half in expectation, half
in despair, the two of them ran off down the sunny street, followed
by the applause of Barbara Summers’ small brown hands.
“First,” said Carin, when they were beyond the hearing of their
elders, “let’s go tell Annie Laurie.”
“Of course,” agreed Azalea. “Even if she doesn’t know of the right
person, she must be told what we’re doing.”
It was not far from the Summers’ home to the rather gaunt house
which Annie Laurie Pace had inherited. The girls made their way
between the well-kept fields in which the fodder was raised for Annie
Laurie’s fine herd of cattle—the celebrated Pace herd, which
provided milk for half the county—and so came by carefully tended
roads to their friend’s home.
Annie Laurie had been training vines to grow over the austere
house, and had made flower gardens in the yard which until recently
had worn a forbidding and business-like appearance. There was
even an arbor about which clematis and wisteria were beginning to
climb, and here, sparsely sheltered by shade, sat Miss Zillah Pace,
the younger and gentler of Annie Laurie’s two aunts. There was a
wistful look on her face and her hands lay idly in her lap, but when
she saw the two girls she got to her feet and came swiftly forward to
meet them.
“Oh,” she cried, “how very nice to see you on such a beautiful day!
Everyone ought to be young to-day, oughtn’t they? I declare, I don’t
see how I’m ever going to give up and be middle-aged if it means
sitting around here at home season in and season out.”
“Were you such a very giddy girl, Miss Zillah?” asked Carin in
amusement, casting an eye at Miss Zillah’s staid frock and prim little
curls, and thinking how amusing it was that such a settled little
person should be able to think of herself as adventurous.
“Not on the outside,” returned Miss Zillah. “When I was young I had
a very great sense of duty, and there were many opportunities for
me to exercise it. But do you know, I’m kind of worn out doing my
duty, and I’d give anything if I were going away on some such jaunt
as we went on last year.” She looked at the girls appealingly, and
then concluded with a shy little smile, “I suppose you think I’m a
dreadfully silly old woman.”
But Carin had clasped Azalea’s arm in a fierce grasp.
“The perfect chaperon,” she whispered, “made to order!”
“Found in fifteen minutes,” whispered back Azalea.
Miss Zillah, who caught their rapid exchange of confidence, looked
perplexed.
“Oh, don’t think us rude, Miss Zillah,” pleaded Carin. “We’re not;
we’re merely excited. You see, we’ve just made a discovery.”
“Have you, my dears?” asked Miss Zillah. “Come sit down in the
arbor and tell me about it.”
“I’m afraid we’re almost too elated to sit down,” laughed Azalea.
“You see, what we have discovered, Miss Zillah, is you.”
“But it’s a long time since you landed on my continent,” said Miss
Zillah.
“Yes, but when we first saw you we made the same mistake that
Columbus did. We thought you were some one else.”
“Who did you think I was? Who am I?” laughed the nice old lady,
glad of an excuse to be talking happy nonsense.
“Why, we thought you were just Annie Laurie’s aunt,” explained
Azalea, “but now we’re wondering if you’re not our chaperon. We’re
going up to Sunset Gap again; this time to teach school. And we
must have a perfect chaperon, else we’ll not be allowed to go.”
“And you’re she!” cried Carin, flinging her arms impulsively about
Miss Zillah’s soft neck. “You know you are! Say you’ll come, Miss
Zillah, and then we can run back and tell our people that everything
is all right.”
 CHAPTER II
PASSENGERS FOR BEE TREE

Three weeks later there was a notable gathering at the railroad

station at Lee. The Carsons were there, the Paces, the McBirneys,
including Jim, in a new straw hat, Dick Heller, just up from the
Rutherford Academy, Sam Disbrow, happy now and full of
wholesome activity, Hi Kitchell and his sister, and ever so many
others, some black and some white. The baggage man was
oppressed with a sense of the importance of the luggage he was to
put on the train, for it included, as he realized full well, the summer
outfit of Miss Zillah Pace and her charges. That is, if Azalea and
Carin, so important and full of business, so suddenly grown up as it
seemed, and their own mistresses, could possibly be looked upon as
“charges.”
“Wire Mr. Summers if anything goes wrong, Carin,” Mr. Carson was
commanding.
“Mind you write me everything—simply everything,” warned Annie
Laurie.
“You will find it very profitable to keep a diary, Sister Zillah,” Miss
Adnah Pace commented.
“It’s a burning shame we’re not all going,” little Mrs. Summers
sighed. “I’m sure the mountain air is just what Jonathan needs.”
Jonathan, who was toddling from friend to friend, sociably offering
the words: “Don’t go” as an example of his conversational powers,
really did not seem to need much of anything.
“If you all went,” broke in the Reverend Absalom Summers, “we’d
have just as much of a town up at the Gap as we have down here in
the valley, and then that would spoil it all, and we’d have to light out
again. Queer, isn’t it, how we all swarm to a town and then hike out
to the solitude, and fret wherever we are?”
“Oh, there’s the train,” cried Azalea. “Oh, mother McBirney, dear,
I’ve got to go. You’re sure you won’t mind?”
“It’s pretty late in the day to be thinking about that,” said Ma
McBirney with laughing tremulousness. “You take care yo’self, Zalie,
and look after Miss Zillah and Miss Carson, and yo’r pa and me’ll be
all right. Do yo’r level best to pass on the l’arnin’ to them pore
untaught folks, Zalie. We’ll be honin’ for you, but we’re mighty
proud that yo’re able to be a help to others.”
Azalea blushed violently.
“Oh, mother,” she whispered, “the people will hear you and they’ll
think I’m a regular missionary!”
“Shake hands, girl,” cried Pa McBirney. “Here’s the train.”
So they were off. Miss Zillah had a seat to herself and her bags and
boxes. Carin and Azalea sat together, and for a time said very little.
Both were a bit tearful—Carin particularly, at the thought that her
parents were going over-seas. But after a while they grew
interested in the flowering mountain side and the little cabins tucked
away on the shelves of the mountains. Azalea even caught a
glimpse of the McBirney cabin lying so confidently on its high ledge
—the cabin through whose hospitable door she had entered to find
the only home she knew.
To keep the tears from getting out beyond her lids, where they were
swimming at rising flood, she turned her attention to the people with
her in the car. Opposite was an old woman in a sun bonnet,
chewing her snuff stick and staring straight before her, without,
apparently, the slightest curiosity about anyone. In front of her sat a
little girl of seven, who evidently was traveling quite alone. She was
just the sort of a child Azalea liked—though, come to think of it,
Azalea had never seen any sort of a child she did not like. This one,
however, was especially attractive, no doubt about that. She had
purplish-blue eyes, like pansies, and dark hair and lashes so long
they swept her cheeks. She looked both shy and innocently bold,
both plain and pretty, both graceful and awkward, both wistful and
mischievous. Azalea decided that when she grew up she probably
would be lovely.
She kept glancing at the girls as if she would like to be acquainted
with them, and finally Azalea motioned for her to come over to their
seat. The little girl got up at the first crook of Azalea’s finger and
crossed the aisle, smiling and coloring as she came.
“You don’t like sitting all alone very well, do you?” Azalea asked. “I
think it’s horrid traveling in the cars with no one to talk to. Don’t
you think I’m lucky to have my friend with me?”
“Yes’m,” said the little girl in a very sweet voice. Then after a pause:
“I couldn’t bring any of my friends with me.”
She seemed to think she would have been the one to do the
“bringing.” It evidently did not occur to her that she would have
been “brought.”
“I’ll turn over this seat if you like,” said Azalea, “and then you may
sit with us. Mayn’t she, Carin?”
“Why, of course,” said Carin. She got up to turn over the seat, but it
stuck and rocked and acted in a singularly perverse way, as car seats
sometimes will, and at that a lad who had been sitting with his nose
buried in a book, arose and came quickly to her assistance.
He was so slender and graceful, his dark eyes were so friendly and
quick to make responses, that the girls and Miss Zillah could not help
staring at him for a few seconds with surprise and admiration in
their eyes. In America lads and young men often have a way of
looking like grown men before their time. They are too business-
like, too responsible, too seasoned. But this boy was as eager, as
gentle as the girls themselves. He not only had not grown up—
though he was as tall as the majority of men—but he looked as if he
had no intention of doing so for some time to come. He held his cap
in his hand, and showed a beautifully shaped head overgrown by a
short crop of dark curls which he had, apparently, tried in vain to
straighten.
“That seat,” he said with a sudden smile, showing two rows of teeth
that could be described in no other way save as “gleaming,” “has a
bad disposition.”
“Yes, hasn’t it?” said Carin. “But I’m sorry to have troubled you.”
“It’s no trouble,” he said, “for me to shake the cussedness out of
anything that acts like that. It’s a pleasure.”
He gave the seat such a shake as irritable parents give to naughty
children, and got it over in place somehow, and he settled the little
girl in it.
“Have you anything that you’d like to have brought over here, Miss
Rowantree?” he asked.
“Please,” said the little girl, “my dolly and my package.”
She spoke with a fine distinctness and with a charming accent.
“She’s English, I’m sure,” whispered Carin to Azalea.
The doll, a battered but evidently well-loved affair, was brought, and
a box held in a shawl strap, which no doubt contained the small
person’s wearing apparel.
“But how did you know her name was Miss Rowantree?” Azalea
asked, or started to ask. Before she had finished her question she
saw on the child’s dark blue reefer a piece of cloth, neatly sewn in
place, and with these words on it in indelible ink:
“Constance Rowantree. Please see that she leaves the train at
Rowantree Road.”
“You’re terrible young to be traveling alone, child,” said Aunt Zillah
seriously. “How ever could they let you do it?”
“I got so homesick they had to,” explained the child with equal
gravity. “Nobody could come with me, so I had to come alone. I
don’t mind,” she added valiantly.
“I hope you reach your home before dark,” went on Aunt Zillah,
quite at ease now that she had somebody to worry about.
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” the child answered, “I’ll get home a long time
before sundown, and my father will meet me.” She spoke in such a
slow and particular fashion that she made them all smile.
“That’s all right then,” said Azalea cheerfully, who was afraid the little
girl was having some fears manufactured for her. “Now, please tell
me the name of your doll.”
“It’s Mary Cecily Rowantree, after my mamma,” said the little girl.
“Isn’t that a pretty name?”
“Pretty as a song,” said the youth, who was still standing by them.
“I wish it was my name,” the little girl added. “I’m only named
Constance.”
“But that’s a lovely name,” Carin told her. “It means that you will
always have to be true to those you love.”
“I love ever so many people,” said the child. “And I’m going to keep
right on loving them as long as I live.”
They chatted on for a while, as congenial folk will on the train. No
doubt if Azalea had been left to herself she would frankly have told
her new acquaintances just where she and her friends were going
and what they intended to do, but the more reserved Carin and the
cautious Miss Zillah forbade, by their eyes, any such confidences.
So, after Constance had finished telling how a lady named Miss Todd
has come to live with them for a while, and how she had taken her—
Constance—home with her, and how Constance had stayed till the
“spell” of homesickness conquered her, no more confidences were
made save by the young man.
“This country’s new to me,” he told them. “But I’ve heard a lot
about it, so I came up to see what it was like. You see, I’m a
painter. At least if I keep on working for the next twenty years
maybe I’ll become one. I’ve been sketching on the islands off the
Carolina coast, and now I’m going to see what I can do with the
mountains. I painted some pictures of the sea that were so bad the
tide didn’t come in for three days and maybe I can make the
mountains so enraged that they’ll skip like lambs. Anyway, it will be
fun.”
“Where do you get off?” asked Azalea cheerfully.
“Hanged if I know,” the youth replied, turning on them again the
radiance of his beautiful smile. “Any place that looks wild enough
will get me.”
“It’s wild at Rowantree Road,” said the little Constance gravely,
looking up from under her long lashes with almost the expression of
some woods creature. “We never see anybody hardly. You can’t
think how wild it is!”
Time went on and in spite of Miss Zillah’s reserved manner, all of the
young people were beginning to enjoy themselves and each other
when the train came to a sudden stop. It was so sudden that it
threw Constance forward on Carin’s lap and hurled the contents of
the overhead carry-alls down on the heads of the travelers.
“Oh!” cried Constance, righting herself, “I hope Mary Cecily isn’t
broken!”
“What is it?” asked Miss Zillah anxiously, addressing herself to the
only man in the party.
But the young man was already out of the car, making
investigations, and he was followed by four traveling men who
plunged out of the smoking room.
“Oh, let’s go see—” began Azalea. But Miss Zillah’s hand was on her
arm.
“Sit still, my dear. The gentlemen will look to the matter,” she said
with the confidence of the old-time woman.
“Of course they will,” protested Azalea, half-vexed and half-
laughing. “They’ll have all the fun of seeing to it. I want some of
the fun myself.”
“No doubt the engine has broken down,” said Carin calmly, “and you
couldn’t do anything about that, could you, Azalea?”
Constance wriggled out of her seat and started for the door, but Miss
Zillah caught and held her gently.
“You are much better in here, my dear,” she said.
The child, rebuked, turned her attention to picking up the articles
that had fallen from their racks. There were, in the seat where their
new acquaintance had been sitting, a knapsack and an artist’s kit,
marked K. O’C. in large black letters on the canvas.
“K stands for Kitty,” said Miss Constance. “O stands for Oliver. C
stands for Constance.”
The young man came rushing back into the car, and he overheard.
“K stands for Keefe,” he declared, “and O’C for O’Connor. That’s
myself, such as I am. The engine has broken down—”
“Just as I thought,” murmured Carin.
“And we’re likely to be tied up here for hours.”
“It is a single track, I think,” said Miss Zillah with forced calm. “Are
we not in danger of a collision? Would you advise me, sir, to take
the young ladies out into the open air?”
“Why not?” asked Keefe O’Connor, packing articles back in the racks
and generally settling the car. “We may as well break up the time a
little.” He happened to look at Constance and caught a look of
dismay on the face that until now had been so cheerful.
“Well, Miss Rowantree, what is it?” he asked.
“If we stay here for hours,” said the wise little girl, “it will be jet dark
when I get to my place.” Her lips quivered a little.
“Come dark, come light,” said the young man, “you’ll be all right,
Constance Rowantree. Just you trust to me. Anyway, worry never
yet mended anything.”
But plenty of worrying was done on that train first and last that
afternoon. The engineer worried and the conductor worried, the
brake-men had their own troubles, and the passengers fretted as
hard as they could. Carin and Azalea walked up and down the track
with Miss Zillah and Constance, and tried to think they liked the
adventure.
“Mr. Summers said that Mr. McEvoy would meet us no matter what
happened,” said Miss Zillah, “and I take it that what Mr. Summers
says is so.”
“Of course it’s so,” Azalea assured her. “We’ll certainly be met, Miss
Zillah. But even if we shouldn’t be, there’d be some place for us to
stay. There are houses at Bee Tree, aren’t there? Or do you think
there is only a tree?”
“Oh, there are houses,” put in Constance. “Daddy goes there to get
his letters and the groceries.”
“Why don’t you get off at Bee Tree with us?” asked Azalea. “Then
we can look after you.”
“Oh, no,” said the child. “Daddy wrote that I was to get off at
Rowantree Road. It’s ever so much nearer our house. I must do
just what papa said. If he was there waiting for me and I stayed on
the train, he’d feel dread-ful-ly.”
She made a very long word of “dreadfully,” separating the syllables
in her queer way.
The conductor of the train overheard what was being said.
“I tell you what it is, Miss Constance,” he said: “I’ll have to see your
father standing right there before me ready to take you in charge
before I’ll let you off in those woods alone. It will be plumb night
before we get to your place.”
“Now, see here, conductor,” said one of the traveling men, “let one
of us boys get off with the little girl. It won’t do at all for her to be
dropped in the woods.”
“Draw lots to see who does it,” proposed another of the traveling
men, and began tearing up pieces of paper. “Here, you fellows!”
But Keefe O’Connor objected.
“Not a bit of it,” he cried. “You men are on business, and it throws
you out of your whole week’s schedule if you miss a town. I’m out
gunning for scenery. Want to paint it, you understand. I have no
destination—only a mileage ticket. Let me get off with the little girl.
If her father is on hand, I can swing back on the train again. If he
isn’t, she can guide me to her house.”
“It’s a terribly long way,” said Constance dolefully. “It’s right through
the woods. You haven’t a lantern with you, have you?”
“No,” admitted Keefe, “I’ve no lantern, but I’m sure we’d make our
way. Didn’t you promise me you wouldn’t worry?”
“No, sir,” said the child seriously, “I don’t think I promised.”
There really was only one person on the train who could be said to
refrain, and that was the mountain woman with the snuff stick.
“I’ve been a-studying nigh on three months about going to see my
son Jake,” she said, “and now it don’t seem to matter much when I
do git thar. I’ve got shet of the work to home for a spell, anyhow.
I’ve kep’ at it twelve year without a let-up, and setting by a while
won’t trouble me none.”
No one had anything to eat, for all had counted on reaching their
destination by supper time, so that sundown saw a group of hungry
people with only Miss Zillah Pace’s generous supply of cookies to
comfort them. But at last the engine was repaired in such a way
that the engineer “reckoned it would hold,” and the train moved
cautiously on through the darkness, delayed here and there at
sidings, and throwing trains all along the line out of their time
schedule.
There was silence in the car. The traveling men no longer told their
stories; Aunt Zillah nodded but dared not doze for fear of missing
her station; the mountain woman brooded patiently, caring little, it
seemed, as to what fate might have in store for her; and little
Constance slept in Azalea’s arms. Carin was supremely patient and
quiet; and the bright eyes of Keefe O’Connor gleamed now and then
from under the rim of his cap, which was pulled low over his face,
and behind which he was occupied in thinking his own thoughts.
But he was alert enough when the conductor came to warn him that
they were approaching Rowantree Road. He and Azalea between
them got the little girl awake, and with his packages and hers, the
friends saw him swing off the train in the black murk. The
conductor’s lantern threw a little glow around him where he stood
holding the hand of Constance fast in his own.
“Mighty good thing you’re here, sir,” they heard the conductor say.
“I certainly would have been put out if I’d had to leave the little one
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com