Kansas Supreme Court Allows Morrison to Join Pro-Abortion Lawsuit 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 5, 2007
Topeka, KS (LifeNews.com) — The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that pro-abortion Attorney General Paul Morrison can intervene in the lawsuit Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri has filed against former top state attorney Phill Kline. The lawsuit is under seal but believed to be about the abortion records Kline obtained.
When Kline was the attorney general. he obtained abortion records from Planned Parenthood and George Tiller’s abortion business in Wichita.
Those records, which a court gave Kline access to when he was investigating possible illegal late-term abortions, were later discussed in public by media outlets and a top psychologist and Planned Parenthood wants them returned.
Kline is now the Johnson County District Attorney and Planned Parenthood’s Overland Park abortion center is within his jurisdiction. He forwarded copies of the abortion records to his new office shortly before leaving the attorney post.
The abortion business filed the lawsuit in June and the state high court’s decision today allows Morrison, who defeated Kline last November, to be a party in it.
Mary Kay Culp, of Kansans for Life, told LifeNews.com that, "The question isn’t why the state supreme court is allowing Morrison to intervene."
"The question is why Morrison is going out of his way to help hide potential evidence of wrongdoing by suing not only Kline to get the records back, but now the very judge that found in those records probable cause to believe that crimes had been committed.," she explained.
Culp refers to the fact that morrison is now suing Judge Anderson, who allowed Kline access to the record initially.
Morrison eventually said Planned Parenthood was not guilty of doing illegal abortions or covering up cases of sexual abuse by doing abortions on minors who were victims of statutory rape.
State law says the abortions can only be done in legitimate medical circumstances, but Kline found that all of the abortions in the charges were done for specious reasons such as depression during pregnancy.
Kansans for Life was disappointed by that decision and worried that political games may have been played.
"Planned Parenthood in Overland Park was the site of political phone banking and letter stuffing (that was surely designed to help Paul Morrison defeat Phill Kline) on multiple dates prior to the last election," the group told LifeNews.com.
Culp, at that time, said the dismissal of some charges "will in no way exonerate Morrison of allegations of a whitewash."
"Two judges who saw the evidence in the records said it constituted ‘probable cause’ that crimes had been committed," Culp explained. "Expert witness Dr. Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins said he saw nothing in the records that got close to meeting the criteria in Kansas law for performing these very late abortions."
