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- <text id=93TT1078>
- <title>
- Mar. 01, 1993: The Church Triumphant
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Mar. 01, 1993 You Say You Want a Revolution...
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 12
- WORLD
- The Church Triumphant
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>Poland adopts one of Europe's strictest antiabortion measures
- </p>
-
- <p> Talk about u-turns. With a pen's stroke, President Lech Walesa
- set in motion legal machinery that within weeks will transform
- Poland from a country with virtually no legal limits on abortion
- to one that possesses (next to Ireland) Europe's strictest laws
- on terminating pregnancies. Under the new measure, doctors can
- perform abortions only when there is proof of rape, incest,
- genetic abnormality in the fetus or an imminent threat to a
- mother's health. Noncomplying physicians are liable to two-year
- prison sentences.
- </p>
- <p> The law culminates a three-year campaign by the Roman Catholic
- Church against the abortion on demand that flourished for three
- decades under communism. Women's groups and a liberal wing of
- the anticommunist Solidarity movement, among others, opposed
- the severity of the curb. The church hierarchy, supported by
- Pope John Paul II, pushed for a total ban. Walesa, an abortion
- foe, opted to sign the new law as the best way to end quarreling.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-