THE MAJORITY of Irish voters support abortion on request up to 12 weeks, a poll has found.
In the poll conducted by The Irish Times and MRBI, the Repeal side has a lead of almost two to one as campaign ramps up before the referendum due this Summer.
The poll was conducted on Monday and Tuesday among a representative sample of 1,200 voters aged 18 and over in face-to-face interviews at 120 sampling points in all constituencies across Ireland.
A clear majority of voters say they will support the introduction of abortion on request up to 12 weeks into a pregnancy, the latest opinion poll found.
Poll respondents were told that it was likely the Government would seek to legislate for abortion to be available on request up to 12 weeks and that in order to legislate for this, the Constitution needed to be changed in a referendum.
They were then asked: “Will you vote to change the Constitution so that the Government can legislate for abortion up to 12 weeks, or will you vote not to change the Constitution?”
A clear majority of all voters – 56 per cent – said they would vote in favour of the constitutional change, with 29 per cent not in favour, while 15 per cent said they did not know or offered no opinion.
When undecided voters are excluded, 65 per cent favour repeal and abortion being allowed up to 12 weeks while 35 per cent do not.
Amongst all voters, support for repeal and legalisation up to 12 weeks is strongest in Dublin at 64 per cent, among women at 58 per cent, among urban voters at 60 per cent and among younger voters.
Support among 18 to 24-year-olds for the proposal is at 74 per cent; among those over 65, it is just 36 per cent.
When voters were asked if their view on abortion being more widely available had changed in the last year, almost a fifth said that were now more open to the idea.
Just three per cent said they were less open to wider availability of the procedure, while nearly three-quarters said their views had not changed.
Asked why they had changed their approach over the last 12 months, respondents cited influences such as thinking a woman should have the right to choose (12 per cent), the news media (12 per cent), having become more informed (eight per cent), that they were “considering it under circumstances such as rape and fatal foetal abnormality” (22 per cent), the availability of abortion pills or women going to England (three per cent), and personal experience or that of a relative or friend (six per cent).
Overall, voters strongly backed a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion (64 per cent), though 57 per cent said they had “reservations” about the 12-week proposal.
Nonetheless, they said it was a “reasonable compromise."
Nearly a third of voters said that they believed abortion was wrong and should not be made more widely available.
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