“Hypocrisy!” The charge was hurled furiously at Sinn Féin on social media this week, after the party abstained on a DUP Bill which seeks to add restrictions to UK abortion laws as applied in Northern Ireland.
I think this was rather unfair. Sinn Féin was accused of hypocrisy for not voting against the DUP Bill. Actually, if there was any hypocrisy, it was in not supporting the Bill.
The party found itself assailed by abortion rights campaigners and commentators after its MLAs in Stormont, after giving some impassioned speeches in favour of a woman’s right to choose, abstained on the DUP Bill which intends to limit the extension of British abortion law to Northern Ireland by outlawing abortion in cases of non-fatal foetal abnormality.
Helen Stonehouse of the Abortion Rights Campaign accused Sinn Féin of failing to protect the human rights of women in the North by not voting against the measure – “especially since their abstention ensures that the Bill will pass”.
The non-fatal abnormalities issue is a faultline between the North's UK-provided legislation and the regime in the South
Cllr Fiona Ferguson of People Before Profit accused Sinn Féin of an attempt to “gaslight women and abortion activists across Ireland”.
“Trust women? Yes. Trust Sinn Féin? Not on this,” she tweeted.
Doctors for Choice said they were “appalled MLAs have sought to restrict the rights of women, who find themselves in the saddest of circumstances, without seeking the views of experts or to establish fact. This Bill is underpinned by misinformation and blatant disregard for women and their families.”
Even Derry Girls got in on it. Actress Siobhan McSweeney, who plays Sr Michael in the acclaimed show, tweeted at Sinn Féin, telling the party that “by abstaining last night you essentially voted with the DUP”.
Mary Lou McDonald fiercely rejected the charges of hypocrisy. “There is no inconsistency... reactionary unionism will not stop women from getting the services they are entitled to.”
McDonald certainly has a point about foot-dragging on the part of the DUP and UUP. Northern minister for health Robin Swann of the UUP has failed to bring forward proposals to actually provide the abortion services that women in the North are legally entitled to, after the Westminster parliament took the unusual step in 2019 of voting to legalise abortion there.
But what McDonald didn’t mention is that the DUP Bill is actually in accordance with Sinn Féin policy.
Restrictive regime
In seeking to prevent abortions in cases of non-fatal foetal abnormality, the Bill would give the North a more restrictive abortion regime than the rest of the UK. This mirrors not just Sinn Féin policy, but also the legal position in the Republic. Many speakers in the Stormont debate referenced people with Down syndrome.
While some opponents of the Bill are furious at the use of the disability argument against abortion rights, it is true that the non-fatal abnormalities issue is a faultline between the North’s UK-provided legislation (albeit not yet implemented) and the legal regime in the South.
The party's restrictive position on abortion was changed only after the referendum in 2018 was passed
On Thursday, the party’s Fingal TD, Louise O’Reilly, a prominent campaigner for the repeal of the Eighth Amendment inside and outside her party, conceded that the DUP amendment was in accordance with Sinn Féin’s policy on access to abortion. But she accused the DUP of “using the issue as a political football as an attempt to pathetically pointscore”.
Emphasising the party’s 32-county identity and 32-county approach, O’Reilly said that Sinn Féin would bring forward legislation to realise abortion rights in the North. That will, she confirmed, be in line with Sinn Féin policy, meaning that it will also be more restrictive than the rest of the UK – specifically in the case of access to legal abortion on grounds of fatal foetal abnormalities. This may further raise the hackles of pro-choice activists.
And many pro-choice activists in the South – who want further liberalisation of the abortion laws here – will now be watching the Sinn Féin attitude to the review of the abortion laws currently under way here.
Fatal foetal abnormality
But in truth Sinn Féin’s unease with the abortion issue goes beyond the Stormont Bill. Partly because of McDonald’s high-profile support for the repeal of the constitutional ban on abortion in 2018, it’s often forgotten that Sinn Féin’s wrestle with its conscience on the abortion issue is just as recent as Fianna Fáil’s or Fine Gael’s.
The party’s previously restrictive position on abortion – allowed only in cases of rape, incest and fatal foetal abnormality – was changed only after the referendum in 2018 was passed, not before.
There were high-profile departures and a bitter aftertaste for many. The party’s peculiar refusal to allow a vote of conscience on the issue deepened the wounds. While Sinn Féin’s pro-choice policy is the natural position of many of its new younger voters in the South, it is a different position for at least some of its older, more traditional republican supporters.
In fairness to it, the party has managed these strains effectively with a mixture of iron discipline and soft fudge. But it’s just one of the differences between the northern and southern branches of the party – which after all exist in two different societies, and two very different polities.
Sinn Féin projects itself as a left-wing and progressive choice – but in the North it is also inevitably, fiercely tribal, part of a system that, in trying to work through the sectarian divides in politics is itself institutionally and architecturally sectarian.
The Stormont arrangements enforce co-operation but rivalry remains intense, and the stakes are growing. The possibility that Sinn Féin could overtake the DUP in the next Stormont elections will drive both parties’ votes in their respective communities.
But Sinn Féin is getting close and it knows it. Realising that goal – and opening up the prospect of a Sinn Féin first minister co-operating with a Sinn Féin taoiseach – will be worth any amount of fudges on abortion, and anything else.