Sinn Féin Leas Uachtarán Michelle O'Neill MLA said: "The DUP’s stunt in the Assembly was pointless, and achieved nothing other than to bring the political institutions into further disrepute and further undermine public confidence. 

It is not lost on the public that the first time the DUP recalled the Assembly was yet another attempt to deny a section of our community rights."

Under legislation passed at Westminster earlier this year, abortion will become widely available across the Six Counties.

The DUP, other conservative unionists and a number of nationalist SDLP members were seeking to prevent Britain’s abortion regime becoming law in the Six Counties. It failed when a Speaker of the body could not legally be elected amid a walk-out by those SDLP members present.

Members of the SDLP who were present refused to take part in the procedure. Party leader Colum Eastwood described the assembly meeting as a stunt and said the issue of abortion legislation “could have been dealt with at any point over the last 1,000 days”, before leading his colleagues in a melodramatic walkout.

Sinn Féin O'Neill said: "If the DUP applied the same creativity and imagination into getting the institutions up and running as they have in denying rights we would have a functioning Assembly. 

Sinn Féin welcomes the end of the denial of the right of our LGBT brothers and sisters to marry the person they love. Sinn Féin also welcomes the end of the archaic law criminalising women."