Pro-life groups have only days to lobby for the return of a power-sharing Stormont Executive to prevent legislation decriminalising abortion being introduced in Northern Ireland via Westminster. John Coulter examines what the situation might mean for NI’s political parties. You can follow John on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter.

If you thought the time-frame in which to broker a Brexit deal, extend the deadline, or stop Brexit entirely before 31 October was tight, then pro-life groups opposed to liberal abortion laws coming to Northern Ireland via Westminster have an even mightier task.

Sunday 13 October saw a day of prayer across churches – both Catholic and Protestant – against this planned legislation which, if there is no functioning NI Assembly by 21 October, will come into force. In practical terms, those who oppose this legislation must find a loophole at Stormont. At the very least they need 30 MLAs to agree to recall the Assembly who can then form a hotchpotch Executive. As we marked 1,000 days without power-sharing this week, these chances are looking very slim. Even if they did manage to get the folks back on the hill, how would this play out against given the 3 October Belfast High Court ruling that Northern Ireland’s current abortion restrictions breach UK human rights laws?

The cross-party dilemma

On paper, only an Irish language act remains a stumbling block to the restoration of devolution, which has been moth-balled since January 2017. The electoral dilemma which the DUP faces is which issue – the Irish language or abortion – has the potential to lose or gain votes. The mentioned Westminster legislation will also legalise same-sex marriage in NI, though the DUP privately recognises it lost this battle a while ago.

It’s been some five years since the death of the DUP’s founder, the late Rev Ian Paisley, also founder of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster in 1951, yet the political influence of Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists both within and outside the party should not be underestimated. Will they feel let down by the DUP’s failure to block these abortion laws and punish the party at the looming Westminster general election? Similarly, if the party did agree to an Irish language act in exchange for stopping these reforms, would liberal unionists and secular Protestants take their votes elsewhere?

It’s not just the DUP which faces this dilemma. Sinn Féin may have been able to see off any electoral challenge from parties supporting dissident republican groups, or even a revitalised SDLP, but could the intervention of the vehemently pro-life Aontú party cost the party seats at Stormont or Westminster? Okay, Aontú has only a handful of elected councillors on both sides of the border, but many socially conservative Catholics may be persuaded either to vote for Aontú or the DUP if pro-life lobbyists manage to move the debate higher up the political agenda – perhaps on a par with, even ahead of, Brexit.

The abortion debate could provide the Catholic Church in Northern Ireland an opportunity too; a chance to regain some moral ground lost from the fallout of clerical abuse scandals of recent decades. One wonders what impact Church-inspired pickets of Sinn Féin offices and advice centres warning ‘support pro-life or we’ll abandon you’ tactics might have. In electoral terms the pro-life lobby arguably has a better opportunity to inflict damage on Sinn Féin than any other.

Could a more liberal UUP stance backfire?

My late father, Rev Dr Robert Coulter MBE, was a North Antrim UUP Assembly member from 1998 to 2011. He was an avowed pro-life champion because of his strongly evangelical Biblical views. In elections, he attracted a significant number of transfers from Catholic nationalist voters because of this stance. The same observation can also be said of the late Rev Ian Paisley’s vote in that constituency.

The UUP is at a crossroads generally as it prepares to elect a new leader on 9 November, though on the abortion issue it faces a similar dilemma to other parties. The party currently allows a conscience vote on abortion, but as we saw in May’s European elections this served to confuse rather than enthuse the electorate particularly when compared to the stance of the more liberal Alliance Party.

A new more liberal UUP leader could make support for the pro-choice position party policy in a bid to go head to head with Alliance, but that is not without significant risk. Who’s to say its traditional right-wing party members won’t abandon the leader’s platform like they did Molyneaux, Trimble and Nesbitt, or defect to the DUP altogether?