Kansas Supreme Court Holds Hearing on Pro-Abortion Lawsuit Against Kline
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 12, 2008
Topeka, KS (LifeNews.com) — The Kansas Supreme Court held oral arguments on Thursday in a lawsuit a Planned Parenthood abortion business filed against a local district attorney for holding it accountable to state abortion laws. The hearing is the latest in the ongoing abortion battle that has consumed the state.
Planned Parenthood hopes to get abortion files back that two judges have determined show "probable cause" that the abortion business violated state abortion laws and falsified medical records.
Robert Eye, a lawyer for the Overland Park-based Planned Parenthood, told the high court Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline should not be allowed to keep the abortion records he obtained as attorney general.
Kline legally received the records during his investigation of Planned Parenthood and transferred them to his new office when he became the county attorney.
A Kansas City Star report indicated Kline’s attorney, Caleb Stegall, told the high court Kline transferred the records legally. He said Eye’s request to hold Kline in contempt is wrong because Kline violated neither a state law nor a court order.
Stegall also responded to another criticism and said some of the records had to be stored at an investigator’s apartment because a staff member in the office of the district attorney had a relationship with the incoming attorney general, Paul Morrison, who eventually resigned after the affair was made public.
In January, Shawnee County District Judge Richard Anderson, who originally validated Kline’s access to the files, testified he had reason to believe documents filed by Planned Parenthood with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment had been falsified before Kline’s investigation while he was attorney general.
The records showed, according to Anderson, that the age of the babies involved in the abortions had been altered to hide the fact that Planned Parenthood was engaging in illegal late-term abortions.
Kline has also said Planned Parenthood engaged in a felony by making copies of state health department abortion reports that it failed to keep on file as required by law.
