The opening of the Marie Stopes International (MSI) Sexual Health Centre must be welcomed by all who care about women's rights. North and South, it has been clear for decades now that a woman whose life or health is seriously at risk because of pregnancy cannot be sure of getting an abortion, if that's what she wants.

In the North, women with underlying health conditions that mean pregnancy will further damage their health and shorten their lives may be offered an NHS abortion in some hospitals – but not in all, or even most. Instead, many are forced to travel to England for a private abortion. Often, they will be given their medical notes to take with them.

So, it is sheer hypocrisy of Northern Ireland’s politicians to say there is no need for the MSI centre. Their hypocrisy is even greater when both Sinn Fein and DUP say that the MSI clinic must “operate under the guidelines and the legal framework set out by the Department of Health”.

Those guidelines were first issued in 2007 and rejected by all the parties on the Assembly Health Committee, then chaired by Iris Robinson as “too liberal”. Since then, they have been amended twice, most recently in July 2010 but Health Minister Edwin Poots has steadfastly refused to issue revised Guidelines!

Poots, like his likely successor as Health Minister, Jim Wells, and several other DUP MLAs, is a member of the Caleb Foundation – an evangelical lobbying group set up in 1998 whose members reportedly describe themselves as “the Caleban”.

Not surprisingly, the Caleban are not only against abortion but are also “opposed in principle to the very concept of civil partnerships for homosexual couples”.

Last year, its chair argued in The Newsletter that the “centrality and relevance of Biblical principles in society must be fully recognised in the Programme for Government” and urged “all evangelical Christian MLAs, and especially those who serve as Ministers on the Executive, to do all within their power to ensure that this is the case. We also encourage them to take their stand against policies which are at variance with the Word of God”.

Unfortunately, rather than standing up to these attempts to keep Northern Ireland in the 18th century, Sinn Fein’s response to the MSI opening echoed the DUP’s – Martin McGuinness told the BBC about the clinic “"We've had a very consistent position down the years. Sinn Fein is not in favour of abortion and we resisted any attempt to bring the British 1967 Abortion Act to the north."

The opening of the Marie Stopes Centre means that, for the first time, abortion services will be legally offered on the island of Ireland. It means that women across the island whose physical or mental health is at risk will have access to legal abortion, rather than having to raise additional funds for travel and accommodation to Britain.

There will, no doubt, be protests by anti-abortionists but it is worth noting that the MSI centre was not in the radio/TV headlines just the day after the news of its opening broke and it was on the inside pages of even the most Catholic of the newspapers.

In the early 1990s, the Brook Advisory Service set up in Belfast, offering sexual health services for young people aged 16-24. There was a huge outcry from anti-abortionists, led by Ian Paisley Snr. They organized mass protests, vowing not to go away until Brook closed. But pro-choice forces, led by socialists, organised and took to the streets, making the pro-choice arguments and holding counter-rallies and support rallies. As the public showed they supported Brook, the numbers of anti-choice brigade dwindled . Today, there are no protests outside Brook. We will need to do the same to defend the MSI Centre.

However, the MSI clinic is not a solution to the problems faced by the vast majority of women here who need abortions. Better off women will continue to access abortions in England, while working class women will get illegal (though very safe) abortion pills over the Internet.