What's worse than abortion being illegal?

Legal and safe abortion that isn't accessible. Sorry, it's a bad joke..

Maybe it's not worse.. maybe just equally as bad 🙈 But it is the reality for some.

I live in Northern Ireland in the UK. In October 2019 our Government legalised abortion up to the 10th week of pregnancy. Actually, the law was forced through into law by the Westminster Government in London, due to ongoing politically instability and ineptitude in NI. 

Of course, in October 2019 many women celebrated. What a relief to finally have something, some sort of safe way to access abortion. Prior to this, terminations were allowed only in the case of threat to life to the mother. A similar law existed in the Republic of Ireland, which saw many women dying while Doctors refused to make the call for fear of breaking the law. For women in NI, the only option therefore was to use a British passport (problematic for 50% of the population who consider themselves Irish) and travel to mainland UK for a termination. 

Yes, this was the state of the UK and Northern Ireland until 2019. But as I say, the law was passed, we had a small victory. Or so we thought.

In 2020 the British Government stepped in again to make it law that abortion should be extended to 12 weeks for any reason, 24 weeks in certain circumstances, and after 24 weeks only in the case of severe fetal abnormality or risk of the mother's death. However, the Health Minister (A highly conservative man) at the time refused to allocate any funding to this area of health care. Ongoing political instability, and the lack of any government at all for over a year now, means nothing has progressed at all.

The following article is nearly 1 year old now, but details 1 woman's struggle here to try to access a safe abortion. 

And now, a year on, we are no further. Abortion is impossible to obtain (literally I have never heard of 1 success that didn't involve taking pills alone at home, or a flight to England). 

So what is the solution? If you are in NI I would love to hear your thoughts on this? We seem no further to having a functioning government, we have now went without for 4.5 years out of the last 10.  Do you have any hope left that abortion will ever be accessible here?