Kansas Voters Defeat Number One Pro-Life District Attorney Phill Kline
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 6, 2008
Overland Park, KS (LifeNews.com) — Kansas voters on Tuesday night defeated the man whom pro-life advocates consider the number one pro-life district attorney in the country. Phill Kline was the only local prosecutor to bring charges against a Planned Parenthood abortion business since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Kline was previously the state’s attorney general. But he accepted an appointment as the district attorney for Johnson County after losing a statewide race to a pro-abortion opponent who received hundreds of thousands in political donations from late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller.
With the local media hounding Kline and criticizing him for holding the abortion industry accountable, he lost his bid to keep his district attorney position.
Some pro-life advocates feared Kline would lose a general election matchup so they supported Republican primary opponent Steve Howe.
With the results tabulated from the Tuesday primary, Howe received about 60 percent of the local vote compared to 40 percent for Kline.
According to a Kansas City Star report, Kline said pro-life advocates have to keep pressing the cause and asked his supporters to move forward from the defeat.
"There are some causes that are worth losing for, and in that there is no defeat," Kline said.
Mary Kay Culp, the director of Kansans for Life, put the defeat squarely at the feet of pro-life advocates who backed Howe’s bid.
"Some pro-lifers thought Kline couldn’t win the general so they made sure he didn’t couldn’t win the primary by sewing up key endorsements prior to Kline announcing," she told LifeNews.com Wednesday. "This, coupled with abortion, cloning and liberal Republican money proved too lethal a combination for Kline to overcome."
Should Howe defeat Democrat Rick Guinn in the November general election, Culp said it will be up to pro-life advocates who supported him to make sure he prosecutes Planned Parenthood.
"Now it is up to Howe’s pro-life supporters to hold his feet to the fire to fully prosecute the Planned Parenthood case — something that was never, ever in doubt with Kline," she said.
Howe has told the local media that he will examine the case against Planned Parenthood should he be elected in November and would proceed based on the evidence and the law.
Planned Parenthood has been accused of doing illegal late-term abortions and falsifying medical records to cover up those abuses.
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