RENO PLEDGES TO HALT FORCE OUTSIDE CLINICS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 13, 1993                   TAG: 9303130069
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short
RENO PLEDGES TO HALT FORCE OUTSIDE CLINICS
Janet Reno, taking office as the nation's first female attorney general, pledged Friday to keep anti-abortion protesters from using physical force that "restrains access to a woman's right to choose."
She also said she would explore whether the Justice Department has authority to prosecute the man who shot and killed a doctor during a protest outside a Pensacola, Fla., abortion clinic this week.
The 54-year-old former Miami prosecutor was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Byron White at the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House. Her 14-year-old niece, also named Janet Reno, held the Bible.
After the ceremony, she quickly made clear there would be changes in the office of the nation's top law enforcement officer.
On a personal level, she said she would walk to work from a downtown apartment - though with a security detail at FBI insistence.
Questioned by reporters about some of the issues she will face, Reno said she would "look at the laws on the books now to see if there is any remedy that we might undertake in response" to the shooting in Pensacola.
She also said, in a shift from Bush administration policy, that she would try to determine how the federal government could use its authority to prevent protesters from blocking the entrances to abortion clinics.
"I think just as there should be a federal remedy for racial discrimination and for gender discrimination, I think in this instance somehow or another there has got to be a federal response to interference through physical conduct . . . which restrains access to a woman's right to choose," she said.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB