[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 3 (Monday, January 20, 1997)]
[Pages 50-51]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Statement on the Bombing of a Women's Health Clinic in Atlanta, Georgia

January 16, 1997

    Our thoughts and prayers are with the law enforcement officers and 
other citizens injured this morning and with their families.

    The double bombing at a women's health clinic in Atlanta this 
morning was a vile and malevolent crime. Make no mistake: Anyone who 
brings violence against a woman trying to exercise her constitutional 
rights is committing an act of terror. It is always wrong. And it should 
be punished severely.

    Nobody has a right to use violence in America to advance their own 
convictions over the rights of others. It is precisely because we take 
the constitutional rights and individual liberties of all our people so 
seriously that I fought for and signed new legislation in 1994 to make 
it a Federal crime to interfere with a woman exercising her 
constitutional right to visit a women's health center.

    Federal investigators from the FBI, ATF, the Marshals, and the U.S. 
Attorney are on the ground in Atlanta and working closely with local law 
enforcement. We will pursue this investigation aggressively and 
methodically. We will get to the bottom of this, and we will punish 
those responsible to the fullest extent the law provides.

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