Students at the Commencement ceremony at the University of Notre Dame have overwhelmingly endorsed the attendance of US President Barrak Obama at this years event.

While anti-abortion protesters paraded off-campus, the President was greeted by long, enthusiastic and sustained cheering when he entered the stadium.

Two hecklers in the audience, one of whom shouted “abortion is murder”, were booed and jeered back by fellow students. Police who removed the protesters were cheered. The students then broke into loud chanting of Mr. Obama’s campaign slogan, “Yes, we can.”

“We’re fine, everybody,” President Obama said, calming the students, some of whom had stood up. He continued to ad-lib based on the theme of his speech, saying, “we’re not going to shy away from things that are uncomfortable.”

Some of the 2,900 graduating students had planned to boycott the ceremony, but many rejected the protests and said they wanted to hear what the president had to say.

As it was only a relative handful of graduating students adorned their mortar board with yellow anti-abortion symbols. But just as many had Mr. Obama’s red-white-and-blue campaign logo on theirs.

President Obama directly confronted America’s deep divide over abortion, appealing to partisans on both sides to find ways to respect one another’s basic decency and even work together to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.