Northern Ireland: Showdown Between the Church and Westminster

So far, every school in Northern Ireland has had a great deal of latitude as to how they apply the curricula concocted by London, especially with regard to themes relating to sexuality. But maybe not for long.

Because the British parliament doesn’t see things the same way and has set up a commission of inquiry - called “human rights” - responsible for evaluating the extent to which colleges and secondary schools provide “an age-adapted education, comprehensive and scientifically accurate on health, sexual, and reproductive rights, including the prevention of early pregnancy and access to abortion.”

As expected, the report is clear: schools – especially Catholic – in Northern Ireland are considered “sexist,” “rigid,” even “retrograde.”

Northern Ireland Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris was quick to follow up with the inquiry, tabling new regulations making it compulsory to teach subjects such as abortion, contraception, and ones that, directly or indirectly, concern “gender” ideology.

To understand what it is all about, one has to go back a few years in time. In 2019, Northern Ireland became the last province attached to the United Kingdom to legalize abortion. In fact, London conditioned the adoption of an agreement to restore a government in Belfast – of which it had been deprived since 2017 due to a political and financial scandal – to the integration of abortion into local law.

It is now legal until the twelfth week of pregnancy, a shorter period than in the rest of the United Kingdom. But soon, Westminster expressed its “frustration and disappointment” at the slowness of the Northern Irish executive to fully implement the new regulations.

However, for the Northern Irish bishops, now is not the time to compromise on the matter: “After having already imposed some of the most radical abortion laws in the world on the people of Northern Ireland, without their consent, the Secretary of State now seems determined to impose an ideologically biased view on children,” they warn.

The prelates urge the Irish to resist the progressivism that London would like to impose on them: “We call on all politicians in Northern Ireland… to oppose the Westminster regulations. We also encourage parents and teachers in Northern Ireland schools to challenge the unfair portrayal by the Secretary of State and the Human Rights Commission of the outstanding work being done in our schools.”