They should have floated a rumor first, like usual
Justice Dept. drops abortion record hunt
By Curt Anderson, Associated Press Writer, 3/9/2004
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department is dropping its effort to subpoena abortion records from six Planned Parenthood affiliates as part of the government's defense of a new law barring certain late-term abortions, officials said Tuesday.
Government lawyers said they were forced to withdraw the subpoenas because of U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton's ruling in San Francisco last week that the records could not be introduced in a trial of a challenge to the law brought by Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
The Justice Department still is pursuing abortion records -- with names, addresses and other personal information edited out -- to defend the law against similar lawsuits brought by abortion providers in New York and Lincoln, Neb.
The lawsuits seek to invalidate a law signed by President Bush last year that bans a procedure referred to by critics as partial-birth abortion and by medical organizations as "intact dilation and extraction." In these late-term abortions, a fetus' legs and torso are pulled from the uterus and its skull is punctured.
Monica Goodling, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the abortion records are considered central to the claims by the law's challengers that the procedure is medically necessary. But, she added, the Justice Department notified the six Planned Parenthood affiliates it would not seek to enforce subpoenas seeking the records because of the San Francisco judge's order.
The Justice Department has come under heavy criticism for its subpoenas of abortion records from many abortion rights and privacy groups, who contend that they violate women's expectations of medical privacy and could cause a chilling effect on a woman's right to an abortion.
"I am glad the department has decided to back off its subpoena for now, but it should never have attempted such as violation of women's medical records and lives in the first place," said Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y. "These subpoenas were just the latest example of this administration's willingness to go to any length to restrict a woman's right to choose."
