Gwyneth Hughes’s drama about women affected by draconian anti-termination laws in Northern Ireland was emotive but ultimately superficial
It was only a couple of years ago, I’d warrant, that the majority of people in Great Britain became aware of the fact that, although the 1967 Abortion Act has permitted the termination of unwanted pregnancies for the past 50-odd years, its remit never extended to Northern Ireland. An extraordinary grassroots campaign (#RepealtheEighth) to give the country’s women the same rights that exist in England culminated in Westminster forcing the decriminalisation of the procedure in 2019.
Gwyneth Hughes’s drama Three Families (BBC One) began in 2013 and took in the situation at the time, and the fight for liberalisation of the law, through a series of personal rather than political lenses. The trio of narratives were based on Hughes’s interviews with three women whose lives were altered by the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.
