Umbilical cord these branches joins with the hepatic portal vein (connecting to its left branch), which carries blood into the liver. The second branch (known as the ductus venosus) bypasses the liver and flows into the inferior vena cava, which carries blood towards the heart. The two umbilical arteries branch from the internal iliac arteries and pass on either side of the urinary bladder into the umbilical cord, completing the circuit back to the placenta. In absence of external interventions, the umbilical cord occludes physiologically shortly after birth, explained both by a swelling and collapse of Wharton's jelly in response to a
Abortion in the United Kingdom declaring that "the restrictive abortion laws and practices and barriers to access safe abortion are gender-discriminatory, denying women and girls treatment only they need". Finally, Northern Ireland Justice Minister David Ford issued a call for public consultation on amending the criminal law on abortion. The call for consultation took into consideration cases where "there is a diagnosis in pregnancy that the foetus has a lethal abnormality". and cases where "women have become pregnant as a result of sexual crime". Ford also wrote that "it is not a debate on the wider issues of abortion law – issues often labelled as