IRIS ROBINSON, the DUP chairwoman of the Assembly health committee, has again come under fire after she said that the duty of government is to "uphold God's law morally".
Mrs Robinson was speaking yesterday on BBC Radio Ulster's Stephen Nolan programme, discussing the issue of abortion with socialist and journalist Eamon McCann, who favours the extension of the 1967 British Abortion Act to Northern Ireland.
It was in the context of a new 10-week consultation process announced by Minister for Health Michael McGimpsey on Wednesday seeking to clarify when abortion was legal in Northern Ireland, although not promoting any extension of the Act to the North - the four main parties in Northern Ireland oppose such an extension.
Mrs Robinson said abortion was a moral issue rather than a scientific or women's issue, as Mr McCann had put it to her. "The government have the responsibility to uphold God's law morally," said Mrs Robinson. "Abortion is morally wrong. The government are there to represent the morals of the scriptures," she added.
Recently the Strangford MP and MLA was criticised after she described homosexuality as an "abomination" and said that gays could be "turned around" with psychiatric help.
Her remarks about government upholding "God's law morally" prompted Sinn Féin MLA John O'Dowd to state that the duty of government was to serve the people. "Iris Robinson's comments were ill-advised and show a great deal of poor judgment on her part in light of other outrageous comments she has made in recent months regarding homosexual people.
"The role of government is to serve the people who elect it, Christians and non-Christians alike," he said.
SDLP MLA Alban Maginness said Mrs Robinson was embarrassing the office of her husband, First Minister Peter Robinson, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.
He said she should take "a vow of silence" over the coming months.
North Down Alliance MLA Stephen Farry accused Mrs Robinson of "yet another embarrassing gaffe", adding: "At a time when Northern Ireland is trying to project a modern, progressive image to the rest of the world, it is bizarre for a senior politician from a party in government to say something like this."
The Alliance for Choice group, which wants British abortion law extended to the North, said that "under the rule of people like this [Mrs Robinson] Northern Ireland is heading towards a future resembling southern Ireland in the 1950s".
