Chapter 6 focuses on that part of the UK that was omitted from the Abortion Act: Northern Ireland. We show that, notwithstanding this formal exclusion, the Abortion Act has played an important role in the region such that a biography of the Abortion Act necessarily offers the story of not just a British law but, rather, of a UK one. Over the past five decades, Northern Irish women have travelled in large numbers to access legal abortions in Britain, with the Act offering a ‘release valve’ that would limit the numbers of dangerous backstreet abortions and the mortality and morbidity that have driven reform elsewhere. Further, the Abortion Act would form a key focus of campaigns for and against abortion law reform within Northern Ireland; when reform eventually came, the Act would play a role in shaping it, and the reform of Northern Ireland’s abortion law has given significant momentum to the campaign for the decriminalisation of abortion.

Between August 1969 and March 1972, the British government focused on reforming but maintaining unionist-majority rule at Stormont to appease both unionists and nationalists. Fear of provoking a civil war and getting entangled in Northern Irish politics - which counted for little at Westminster - explains the British government’s reluctance to attempt significant reforms prior to 1972. In addition, Edward Heath’s government was reluctant to negotiate and grant significant concessions to violent opponents of the state. Yet allowing Stormont to delay and dilute reforms and to influence British security policy dragged the British Army into conflict with the nationalist population. As nationalist anger increased, the non-violent Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) pulled out of Stormont in the summer of 1971. IRA activities increased. Escalating violence eventually forced the British government to suspend Stormont and assume direct rule. By March 1972, the British government had realised that the IRA could not be militarily defeated, and tried instead to reduce violence to 'an acceptable level' to enable political solutions to emerge. But IRA violence continued and influenced both the SDLP and British government to talk to the IRA in June 1972.