The Church Triumphant

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.

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.