Kansas Judge: Abortion Businesses Don’t Have to Report Teen Sexual Abuse
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 18, 2006
Wichita, KS (LifeNews.com) — A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that abortion businesses and practitioners are not required to report cases of sexual abuse or statutory rape under Kansas law. Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline has been pursuing a case against two state abortion centers for not reporting statutory rape of underage girls getting abortions.
Kline said a 1982 law requiring doctors, teachers and others to alert state and local officials about potential child abuse covers the statutory rape young teens experienced who are getting abortions.
He said the law should apply to abortion practitioners as well, but the abortion centers challenged that and won.
"It’s not unexpected," Kline said of the ruling, according to an AP report. "It’s what we’ve been predicting."
U.S. District Judge Thomas Marten ruled that the law in question gives health care providers the latitude to determine if they believe a child has been subject to abuse. That leaves it up to Kansas abortion facility staff to determine whether they want to report statutory rape of teens under 16 or not.
Judge Marten ruled that it was more important for health care workers to be able to treat patients with confidence and not violate their privacy by reporting possible abuse.
Despite that view, he contended that his ruling was "not about promoting sexual promiscuity among underage persons."
Kline is also looking into the potential that illegal late-term abortions have been performed at the late-term abortion facility operated by infamous abortion practitioner George Tiller in Wichita. Tiller escaped prosecution in the abortion death of a mentally disabled teenager last year.
Abortions in Kansas can’t be performed after 22 weeks of pregnancy and require a viability test on the unborn child. Such abortions can only be performed for medical health reasons.
In addition to Tiller’s facility, Kline is seeking abortion records from the Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri abortion business in Overland Park. The records involve 90 women and girls.
