In both states on the island of Ireland the authorities have built a wall of denial around the abortion question. In the republic, abortion is banned in all circumstances, while Northern Ireland remains the only part of the UK where the 1967 Abortion Act does not apply. Those in power adopt the cynical approach of the late Charles Haughey and offer only an Irish solution to an Irish problem: in both states they simply export their abortions to Britain.
A week ago, a crack appeared in the wall when the sexual health charity Marie Stopes International opened a clinic in Belfast offering limited non-surgical abortion services of up to nine weeks to women from Cork in the south to Derry in the north. Marie Stopes Northern Ireland's new centre provoked fury and ire among the anti-abortion lobby, although tellingly the hundreds of protesters they brought out on the streets of central Belfast were far fewer than the thousands they had predicted. The protesters were cheered, though, by the news that Northern Ireland's attorney general, John Larkin, had intervened in the abortion debate by offering his advice to the Northern Ireland assembly's justice committee, inviting them to investigate the legal position of the new clinic. And not just his advice. Although he cannot use the law to force the clinic to close, the attorney general's letter to the committee made clear that he was willing to act as counsel and cross-examiner on behalf of any investigation they undertook.
Mr Larkin has form on the abortion issue. In 2008, on a local radio show, he compared the termination of a pregnancy where a child would be born extremely disabled as "putting a bullet in the back of the head of the child two days after it's born". At the time the highly able QC was not the attorney general and was undoubtedly entitled to his personal views. However, Mr Larkin is now the chief law officer for everyone in the province, including the substantial part of the population who are pro-choice on abortion.
Mr Larkin has a taste for making proactive use of his office. Earlier this year he tried to prosecute the former NI secretary Peter Hain for criticising a judge. He also intervened in a European human rights case to argue against adoption by gay couples. Given that the main parties in the cross-community coalition running Northern Ireland are all hostile to legal abortion, any move against the Marie Stopes clinic by the devolved government is clearly likely to be hostile. But the attorney general is a public servant of all the people, including women facing crisis pregnancies or who are victims of rape. Mr Larkin should stop stirring the Marie Stopes pot and stop controversialising his office in this way. If he intervenes again on the matter his position as chief legal adviser in Northern Ireland is surely untenable.
