UCC student body favour repeal of 8th Amendment

University College Cork’s Student Union is to campaign for the repeal of the Eighth Amendment, which introduced a constitutional ban on abortion, following a poll of its students.

Some 84% of the students who voted said yes to the question “Should UCC Students’ Union campaign to repeal the 8th Amendment of Bunreacht Na hÉireann?” The poll was held on Monday and Tuesday.

However, with only 3,363 valid votes cast, the turnout represented 20% of UCC’s student population; 2,837 students voted yes to the proposal, while 526 voted against.

The UCC Student Union president, Aidan Coffey, said that the poll was prompted by a petition signed by 500 students, and that the union’s role in any campaign had yet to be determined.

Meanwhile, the Pro Life Campaign has accused the women’s wing of the Labour Party of ignoring the “grave injustice” of abortion, after the group yesterday launched the framework for a bill it would introduce should the Eighth Amendment be repealed in a referendum.

Labour’s women’s bill would introduce four medically certified grounds for access to legal abortion: A risk to life, risk to health; rape; and fatal-foetal abnormality.