Kansas Dispute Over Abortion Records in Sexual Abuse Cases Continues
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 29, 2006
Topeka, KS (LifeNews.com) — A dispute over records from two abortion facilities that have been refusing to assist a state investigation over girls who may have had abortions after becoming victims of sexual abuse continues. The abortion businesses say they haven’t given Attorney General Phill Kline any of their records even though prosecutions have been made in the case.
Kline’s pursuit of the information has become a key campaign topics as pro-abortion Democratic candidate Paul Morrison says Kline has wasted the office’s time and resources in the investigation.
But Kline said Thursday that charges have been filed in Kansas and other states in relation to the statutory rapes of underage girls who visited the two abortion facilities. He pointed to a recently filed case in Marshall County as one example.
Kline called a Thursday news conference to discuss the Marshall County case, in which a man is accused of statutorily raping a 14 year-old girl in a Marysville motel. Kline said a record from an abortion center tipped him off about the sexual abuse.
Kline also said his abortion-sexual abuse probe has led to six other cases that he has referred to prosecutors in Illinois, Missouri and New York.
"There are prosecutions resulting from information that has been obtained in that inquisition," Kline said, according to the Wichita Eagle newspaper.
Meanwhile, attorneys for the abortion centers — George Tiller’s late-term abortion facility in Wichita and Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri’s abortion business in Overland Park — bashed Kline in comments about the investigation.
"I am disturbed that Mr. Kline continues to make suggestions and allegations about records he has never seen," Pedro Irigonegaray, a Topeka lawyer representing Planned Parenthood, told the Eagle newspaper.
"The records that he refers to are of immense importance to the privacy of American women. I find it abhorrent that anyone would consider using those records for their political benefit," he added.
Morrison has attacked Attorney General Phill Kline over his probe and indicated earlier this month he would halt it entirely.
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
