For decades, Northern Ireland has upheld one of the world's most restrictive abortion rules, permitting the procedure only when the mother's life is at risk. Victims of rape and incest seeking to end any resulting pregnancy could expect to face the inside of a police cell.

But at the stroke of midnight on Monday, those laws came crashing down. Abortion is now decriminalisedStop treating something as a criminal offence. in Northern Ireland and, from February 2020, same-sex couples will be able to marry.

In Belfast, activists and women who had suffered under the law were jubilant and relieved.

It is "the beginning of a new era for Northern Ireland - one in which we're free from oppressive laws that have policed our bodies and healthcare," declared Grainne Teggar of Amnesty International.

"Thousands of women from the North have abortions every year outside the law, in their bedrooms or in England," said pro-choice activist Goretti Horgan. "They will now be able to access normal health care."

Now that this deeply religious, conservative region has been brought into line with the rest of the UK, is the abortion issue settled once and for all?

Opposition remains fierce. The legal change itself did not come from Northern Ireland, which has not had a functioning government for almost three years, but from Westminster.

In a last-ditch attempt to block the change, on Monday, MPs from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) filed into StormontThe home of the Northern Irish assembly in Belfast. for the first time in over 1,000 days. They tried to mount a Defence of the Unborn Child bill, but the plot descended into constitutional wranglingIt was impossible for the DUP to pass any legislation without the consent of Sinn Fein, who described the DUP's efforts as a "circus". and fell apart.

But the party's pro-life stance remains firm. The DUP has pledged to use "every legal option" to block abortion rights, maintaining that 57% of the Northern Irish population "didn't want a change in the abortion laws".

"This is not [about] women's rights," said the DUP's Jim Wells in a fiery radio interview. "The human rights that everybody ignores in all of this [are] the rights of the unborn human being, and they are the most vulnerable of humans."

Many around the world agree with him, as the debate over abortion rights rages from Europe to Latin America. In Trump's USA, a woman in Georgia could face 30 yearsMost of the tighter US abortion laws introduced in the US this year have not come into effect as they are awaiting legal challenges. in prison for terminating her pregnancy.

It is not a feminist issue, writes Andrew Glover. Pro-lifers "don't dispute that women should have control over their bodies. What they do dispute is that bodily autonomy should include the right to end the life of a human fetus or embryo, which they view as morally equivalent to your life or mine". In Jim Wells's words, "It's morally wrong to kill unborn babies."

But Elizabeth Nelson disagrees. "It's about control over women's bodies and lives [...]. The value [pro-lifers] place on life starts and ends in uteroIn the uterus. - confining women to traditional gender roles and controlling their ability to participate in society." After all, "if it was about abortion and not control, they would have been calling for free universal childcare and affordable housing for all". Anti-abortion activists only care about "life" when it suits them; they are using the embryo to control the woman.