Kansas Attorney General Candidate Morrison Would Halt Abortion Probe Email this article
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 6, 2006
Topeka, KS (LifeNews.com) — Democratic candidate Paul Morrison has attacked Attorney General Phill Kline over his probe into whether abortion businesses are covering up instances of statutory rapes by failing to report the acts and aborting the babies of the girls who become pregnant. On Tuesday, he indicated he would halt the probe entirely.
Morrison, who backs abortion and Kline, a pro-life Republican, will meet up in the November 7 general election.
Instead of focusing on the cover-up of statutory rape, Morrison says he would establish a domestic violence program in the attorney general’s office similar to the one he has as the Johnson County District Attorney.
“It’s a wonderful thing to be able to say that there are people in your communities that are walking around alive today who would be dead if it were not for these kinds of programs," Morrison said, according to a Lawrence Journal World news report.
“Some of the money that’s been used on misplaced priorities could easily fund” the effort, he said, attacking Kline’s probe.
Kline’s campaign criticized Morrison’s comments and said his office had done a good job working to protect young minor girls in Kansas who are not old enough to consent to sexual relations.
Sherriene Jones, a Kline spokeswoman, told the newspaper it was “disheartening that an attorney general would turn his or her back to a child that has been sexually molested or raped.”
Jones also said Kline has done a good job of working on domestic violence issues and Morrison’s pledge to start a new program would duplicate current efforts.
She told the Lawrence newspaper Morrison is “taking things that are already happening in the attorney general’s office and repackaging them.”
Last month, Kline said his investigation was not a part of a political agenda but a legitimate effort to protect girls in Kansas.
“When I have a 10-year-old who gets pregnant and gets a late-term abortion and was impregnated at the age of 9, and no one calls the police, I don’t consider it a narrow agenda to try and bring her rapist to justice,” he told the Dodge City Daily Globe.
Kline sought the records of girls in 90 abortion cases from two abortion businesses, who sued to stop the investigation from continuing.
A Shawnee County District judge subpoenaed the records and backed Kline’s probe, but the abortion centers appealed the decision, refusing to cooperate. The Kansas Supreme Court eventually ruled that Kline could get access to the records as long as the privacy of the girls was protected
The state pro-life group Kansans for Life worries that Morrison will benefit from another last-minute infusion of hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign cash from infamous late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller.
Tiller, who escaped prosecution in the abortion death of mentally disabled 19 year-old Cristin Gilbert, owns one of the two abortion centers in Kline’s probe.
Tiller’s ProKanDo PAC funneled $150,000 to Kline’s opponent in 2002. The web site for his abortion business asks women who have had abortions to donate to the political group.
Related web sites:
Kansans for Life PAC – https://www.voteprolife.net