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WARSAW, Poland, September 26, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – After a two and a half year battle, a Warsaw court this month found that Polish pro-life leader Joanna Najfeld was “not guilty” of defamation against the country’s most infamous abortion activist when Najfeld claimed the activist was on the “payroll” of the abortion and contraception industry.

“I hope that my verdict will give other people some more courage to always say the truth, and never let evil intimidate or scare them into silence,” Najfeld told LifeSiteNews.

Wanda Nowicka, head of Poland’s Federation for Women and Family Planning, launched a criminal lawsuit against Najfeld after she had made the comments in a February 13, 2009 television debate.  Najfeld faced 2 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 if found guilty.

In the TV debate, Najfeld had cited Nowicka as an example of an activist who poses as an objective expert on sex education while maintaining financial ties to the abortion and contraception industry.  “Ms. Nowicka’s organization is part of the largest international network of providers of abortion and contraception, so she is on the payroll of this industry,” Najfeld stated.

Nowicka claimed that Najfeld had lied and damaged her reputation, and sued her under a controversial provision in the penal code leftover from Communist times.

But after 16 appearances in court over two and a half years, the judge ruled on September 12 that Najfeld was “not guilty” of the charges.  The court concluded that her claim was not false, and did not damage Nowicka’s reputation.

The details of the case are unknown and the court documents are inaccessible.  Though Nowicka claimed that she sued Najfeld to clear her name, when the judge suggested they allow the public in the court room, she demanded that the whole case be classified.

Najfeld told LifeSiteNews that because the case is classified, she would face three years in prison if she disclosed anything about the trial, including the evidence they presented of Nowicka’s ties to the abortion and contraception industry.

Nowicka’s organization includes the Polish branch of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which is the world’s largest abortion provider.  She was responsible for inviting the infamous Dutch abortion ship that arrived in Poland in 2003 to carry out illegal abortions.  And her group was behind several “wrongful birth” cases brought before the European Court of Human Rights in an effort to force Poland to liberalize its abortion law.

In 2008, Nowicka was accused of pressuring a 14-year-old girl to abort her child and of creating false claims that the girl had been raped in order to use the girl as a poster child for her campaign to legalize abortion.

Najfeld said her “not guilty” verdict was a “victory for truth and justice” after “a series of blatantly unjust verdicts against Catholics and conservatives in Poland.”

She highlighted the case of Fr. Marek Gancarczyk, who was fined $11,000 after calling abortion “killing” in a Catholic magazine.  The ruling was upheld by an appeals court in March 2010.

After such cases, “you could really get scared of saying anything politically incorrect, for fear of being sued,” Najfeld said.

“Sadly, a lot of people did get scared. That’s what the leftists want most: to shut us up, to intimidate and scare us to the point of silencing,” she continued. “The verdict in my case shows that they are not there yet. They are not always able to use the courts against their opponents.”

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Piotr Kwiecien, one of Najfeld’s lawyers, told LifeSiteNews that the verdict is a victory for “transparency” in public debate.

“We need to be able to openly discuss what institutions, companies, and interest groups finance the operation of organizations which exert influence on our country’s law and legislature,” he said.  “When an organization calls itself an NGO or a grassroots movement that lobbies for sex education or subsidized contraception, and at the same time is financed by manufacturers of contraception, this information should be public.”

“We need to be able to tell if an ‘expert’ we see on television is objective, or if she represents the interests of some business entities that prefer to remain hidden,” he added.