Research can offer plenty of evidence to back the case for relaxing Ireland’s near total abortion ban in the country’s upcoming referendum, says Lara Williams

Andrzej Krauze

IRELAND is heading towards what may well be a historic moment, with its 25 May referendum on whether to relax the country’s near total ban on abortion.

Voters are being asked if they want to repeal a constitutional clause – the Eighth Amendment – voted into law by a referendum in 1983. It makes having an abortion, other than when the woman’s life is at risk, a crime punishable by up to 14 years in jail.

It is one of the world’s most prohibitive such laws, and women who are made pregnant by rape or incest, or whose health is at risk but that risk isn’t …