as come to resemble western Germany. This tendency obscures two important points: the impact of unification on western Germans has not been merely financial and today's Federal Republic is not simply a bigger version of its pre-unification self. Unification has likewise compelled western Germans to reconsider their views on a number of domestic issues beyond the economic rebuilding of the east. "Educational unification," for example, was postponed in 1994 until the end of the decade following an inconclusive debate on reforming secondary school curricula. One of the central points of contention was whether the course of studies leading to the Abitur, the academically oriented high school diploma required for university admission, should be 13 years, as has long been standard in the west, or 12 years, the eastern norm that the Kohl government proposed as a model for the country as a whole in 1992. Probably the most difficult social issue to resolve in the wake of unification was abortion. It was not until 1995 that Germany's major political parties found a way to reconcile the pre-unification Federal Republic's prohibition of abortion except under special circumstances and the German Democratic Republic's policy of allowing abortion on demand during the first trimester of pregnancy. In a compromise between east and west as well as left and right, abortion is now illegal in Germany but not criminal so long as a woman seeking an abortion first attends a state-approved counseling program to review her options. Political unification came as a consequence of the end of the Cold War. Beyond laying the foundations for merger of the two German states, the peaceful resolution of the East-West conflict opened the way for Germany to play a larger role within Europe and on the international scene. Germany, with its sovereignty fully restored by the 1990 "...
