> Chris
> said Poles weren't jumping to make abortion legal, but evidence to the
> contrary is that women 'jumped' to actually get abortions. Polish women
> still get between 80,000 and 200,000 a year, despite the legal obstacles.
> Catholic abortions.
Just because a woman gets an abortion doesn't means she thinks abortion ought to be legal generally. Ask anyone who works in counselling or provision - lots of women rationalise their own decision while still insisting that OTHER women shouldn't be able to get abortions. This is true in the US and Ireland so I'd imagine it's at least as true in Poland, given the extent of the stigma there.
My understanding from the Polish pro-choice movement is that they are not at all optimistic about the laws being relaxed any time soon, in fact the current government seems to want to make them even stricter.
And while obviously there is not a one-to-one correlation between Catholicism and anti-abortionism, it's quite clear to me that the influence of the Church here in Ireland is a hugely significant factor both in the rigidity of the abortion laws and in public opinion and, as I said earlier, the Poles themselves appear to think the same about their own country. In the US it may be no more than an association but that is *not* the case everywhere else in the world. (over here most people think American Catholics are all "cafeteria Catholics" anyway...)