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THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release January 16, 1997

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT

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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