US won't pursue abortion records

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 yesterday. Government lawyers said they were forced to withdraw the subpoenas because of US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton's ruling in San Francisco last week that the records could not be introduced in 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."

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 have 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 a violation of women's medical records and lives in the first place," said Representative Louise Slaughter, Democrat of New York.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has said that all the records would be edited before they are given to government lawyers to remove all information that would identify a specific patient.

New York-based Planned Parenthood has 900 health centers in 49 states. The six affiliates affected by Tuesday's decision are those serving western Pennsylvania, San Diego, Los Angeles, New York City, Kansas/mid-Missouri and the Washington metro area.

The Justice Department served subpoenas for records from those six because two of them employed experts that Planned Parenthood planned to use in the San Francisco trial and the others were identified by the national organization in various court documents.

Lawyers for the six argued, however, that they weren't directly involved in the San Francisco lawsuit and shouldn't be required to produce the records. They also resisted on privacy grounds.

The government had obtained some records from Planned Parenthood's national office and its San Francisco affiliate, but under the judge's ruling they won't be admissible as evidence in the San Francisco trial. The Justice Department could appeal that decision after the trial is over.

Planned Parenthood officials could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday on the Justice Department decision.