“I have had emails from nationalists and republicans in Northern Ireland not quite believing what is going on and saying they will be voting for the DUP because they believe that we are the only Party that supports the unborn,” said Arlene Foster in an interview broadcast on Sky News last Sunday.

Foster was not alone in suggesting that Sinn Féin may lose votes among the Catholic side of its voter base due to the republican party’s support for the repeal of the Eighth Amendment: there have also been various rumblings round the webs of social media which have suggested similar. President and Vice President Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill appearing at Dublin Castle holding a sign which read, ‘The North is Next’ may well have hit a sore nerve for some of their northern supporters.

This is not an entirely unprecedented effort by a DUP leader: during the television debate for the 2011 Assembly election, Peter Robinson suggested that Northern Catholics were more closely aligned with his party than the two main nationalist ones as “one is a left wing party (the SDLP), the other is a far left party (Sinn Féin),” and he had announced that his campaign would step up its appeals to Catholic voters as part of a reconciliation effort. Aside from the obvious disputes which could be made here, over where both Sinn Féin and the SDLP fall on the political spectrum, it does not seem that the notion expressed by Robinson ever found its feet.

Recent polls made headlines as they suggested that only a small percentage of Catholics favour a United Ireland with any sense of expediency, though one would be mistaken to take this and Foster at face value and forget the past eighteen months which have widened the causeway between the DUP and Sinn Féin. Foster has been in no small way responsible for this divide and her leadership has not warmed anyone who was not at least standing beside the unionist tent already.

At this point in time a switch of any meaningful proportion from Sinn Féin to the DUP seems marginally less likely than Gerry Adams flapping his wings and flying off to Never-never Land; it seems more likely that Arlene Foster will sprout wings and fly too close to the sun.

In February of this year, Alex Kane penned an article for The Irish News on what was then the most recent collapse in the talks to establish an Executive at Stormont. The crux of Kane’s article was that we were moving into the “political endgame,” and Kane cited the cases of two friends from South Belfast who were traditional SDLP voters, who had expressed their intention to vote Sinn Féin at the next opportunity; and two friends in East Belfast who were traditional Ulster Unionists, though they had flirted with Alliance, and were now leaning into the DUP camp. Both sets of voters expressed to Kane that they were in “endgame territory” as a result of the bitterly partisan, and sectarian, nature that had become of regional politics in Northern Ireland.

The issue of abortion is certainly one which is particularly emotive, not just in Ireland, North or South, but in the world over. Traditionally, abortion has been one of the few issues on which both republicans and unionists could agree on their shared opposition, which was evidenced most recently by the recent alignment of the Orange Order and the Iona institute joining support of the ‘No’ campaign. However, there has been little indication as of yet to suggest that issue would cause a reverse of what has been a trend of almost two years and of formidable temper.

The second point seems to be the most obvious: even with the importance of the pro-life position to Catholic teachings (and for the few who still follow the latter), it seems a jump of Olympic gold proportions to suggest at this juncture that such would align Catholic voters with the Party of Paisley which has shown little sign of alteration from the original position of its foundation. The logical conclusion is that any aversion to Sinn Féin’s support for abortion reform will cause a few or some to revert to the SDLP, which has not faired too badly in the most recent elections. The SDLP now allow candidates and members alike sway on abortion as a matter of conscience, however they remain a pro-life party in general.

In conclusion, Catholic voters may not be avowedly nationalist, with the aversion to the Union that those who don’t know any better might assume, and they may be against abortion to some degree or another, but they are not Paisleyites. Meanwhile, it is also in the news that Arlene Foster plans to lead an Orange Order parade through Fife in Scotland this July; DUP ambivalence on UVF flags in mixed housing estates has also not been entirely stricken from Catholic minds.

Sinn Féin may lose out in the North because of their stance on abortion, but to suggest it will be to the DUP’s advantage is to get very far ahead of ourselves.