New German abortion law

BONN (Reuter) - The Bundesrat approved a liberal abortion law yesterday allowing women to have pregnancies terminated virtually without restriction during the first 12 weeks.

Catholic Bavaria was the only one of Germany's 16 states to vote against the controversial law. Bavaria warned it would seek to have the law overturned by the Constitutional Court which struck down an attempt to liberalise West German abortion law in 1975.

The law was one of the last remaining pieces of business left after Germany united in 1990. East German women had until now retained the right to abortion on demand.