JUSTICE DEPARTMENT STATEMENT
REGARDING CARHART V. ASHCROFT:

“The Justice Department is reviewing Judge Kopf’s order, in which he declined to apply his injunction to cases where the unborn child is indisputably viable. In this case, as in the cases in New York and California, the Justice Department has worked hard to defend the law passed by Congress to prevent partial birth abortions, a law which President Bush said ‘affirmed a basic standard of humanity, the duty of the strong to protect the weak.’

“After signing this Act of Congress, President Bush pledged that ‘the executive branch will vigorously defend this law against any who would try to overturn it in the courts.’ As the Attorney General has noted, we will continue to defend the law to protect innocent new life from partial birth abortion, and have already appealed the recent district court ruling from California that found the law unconstitutional.”

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