The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) is supporting the the national civil society campaign, Together For Yes, to remove the Eighth Amendment from the Constitution in order to protect women’s safety, health and wellbeing. In the coming months, USI will also be registering thousands of students to vote ahead of the proposed date of May 25th.
Speaking about the launch, USI President Michael Kerrigan said,
“Students are behind this campaign, and are willing to show compassion by voting ‘Yes’ so people can make personal and private decisions without the fear of being charged as criminals. We must remove the Eighth Amendment, and we must accommodate students to vote. Students are overwhelmingly in favour of changing our restrictive abortion laws to become a country that values dignity and respect of people.”
“We are on the right side of history, and we’re bringing hundreds of thousands of students along with us”, Mr Kerrigan said.
“We’re ramping up to register students to vote again and getting students ready to canvass. Together we will vote ‘Yes’ to remove the Eighth Amendment.”
USI is the national representative body for the 374,000 students in third level education on the Island of Ireland. USI registered 18,000 students who have never voted before between September and November 2017 alone, adding to the upwards of 80,000 students registered to vote by USI in recent years.