Justice Dept. drops effort to subpoena Planned Parenthood abortion records

(03-09) 16:09 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

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.


<snip>

Link to entire AP article

Schoolyard bullies. :nuke:

Bush is all involved in ammending the Constitution to ban gay marriage and cannot get involved in the negative publicity of this abortion thing where women do not want to birth monsters.

You know, he is really backed into a corner on a lot of things. Up until now, I do think he and his handlers have thought they were riding high and that this next election will be a piece of cake. They were arrogant in their assumptions and over confident perhaps.

It seems that nothing, not even the abortion bill
bush signed with those fat white headed congressional males all beaming behind him, is working well for him. And I bet those white heads behind him will abandone the idiot as fast as they lined up behind him. Ain't it grand?

A win for the good gals!

good work, people!

And why is it important that we vote for a Democratic presidential candidate?

It's important to note that this only applies to the Planned Parenthood subpoenas. They haven't changed their intention of getting the records, they've just withdrawn the subpoenas related to the ruling in SF.

It's not over. They still assert that they have the right to get the records. According to the article, they only backed off on the Planned Parenthood supoenas because the judge said those records aren't relevant to their case (more or less, at least that's how I read it).