THE first abortion clinic in Ireland has opened in Belfast, sparking protests by conservatives from both the Catholic and Protestant sides of Northern Ireland.
The Marie Stopes family planning centre will offer the abortion pill to women who are less than nine weeks pregnant - but only if doctors determine they're at risk of death or long-term health damage from their pregnancy.
That's the law in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, where abortion is otherwise illegal.
But more than 200 protesters opposed to abortion under any circumstances gathered outside the central Belfast clinic hours ahead of its opening on Thursday, waving placards reading "Keep Ireland abortion free".
And Northern Ireland Attorney-General John Larkin wrote to politician, who broadly oppose abortion, offering his help if they investigate the clinic's operations. Larkin said he could order the clinic to be closed only if evidence emerged of "serious criminal conduct" there.
Protesters demanded that the clinic be shut down regardless, lest it become a beachhead for expanding abortion rights in Northern Ireland, the only corner of the United Kingdom that has not legalised abortion on demand.
"We're in 2012. Women's health is not in danger. Women are not dying because they cannot get abortions," said Bernadette Smyth, the Protestant leader of a Belfast anti-abortion group called Precious Life.
"For Marie Stopes, this is only a first step," said Liam Gibson from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, a predominantly Catholic pressure group.
He called on Belfast police to arrest the clinic's doctors and directors if they give women information about abortion services in neighbouring Britain, where abortions have been legal since 1967. About 4000 women from the Republic of Ireland and 1000 from Northern Ireland travel there annually for abortions.
Officials from Marie Stopes, a British charity that already operates such clinics in more than 40 countries, said they expect to provide relatively few abortions in Northern Ireland, given the heavy legal restrictions.
But they said Belfast, and all of Ireland, needed a non-judgmental, non-threatening place where women in crisis pregnancies could go for guidance. They said their office was already receiving calls from women in the Republic of Ireland, where it's illegal to receive shipments of the abortion pill through the mail.
"Mostly what we'll be doing is offering advice. Many of the people we see we won't be able to treat, because of the legal framework," said Tracey McNeill, vice-president of Marie Stopes.
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