Most people think that Britain has had abortion on demand for 53 years. In practice, it has had.
The law is phrased in such a way as to establish that, but without appearing to do so to people who were reading at speed or who were seeing only what they wanted to see.
30 years ago, the Thatcher Government even abolished the upper time limit completely, again without appearing to do so if you were determined to pretend to yourself that it had not happened.
But there will be no such subtlety for Northern Ireland. It is to have one of the most liberal abortion laws in the world, from Day One, right there on the page in plain English.
By the way, the 1967 Abortion Act was barely noticed at the time. You have to scour specialist Catholic publications for very much mention of it, and well under one in 20 MPs voted against it.
None of the 1960s Permissive Society legislation formed any part of Roy Jenkins's reputation until the 1980s, when his opponents on other issues decided to pretend that they had been "misled" or "deceived", a trick that they were later also to pull about the EU.
Although not sufficiently "misled" or "deceived" to do anything about it, then or now. Quite the reverse in fact. As, today, we see. Again.
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