Kansas Pro-Life Group: Supreme Court Delaying Planned Parenthood Charges
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 16, 2010
Topeka, KS (LifeNews.com) — The pro-life group Operation Rescue is tired of waiting on the Kansas Supreme Court to get moving on 107 charges Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri is facing. The charges allege the abortion business potentially engaged in illegal abortions and violated state record-keeping laws.
Former state attorney general Phill Kline, as the then Johnson County District Attorney, filed 107 charges, including 23 felonies, against the abortion business for allegedly violating state law.
The Kansas Supreme Court held a hearing in the case involving the Overland Park Planned Parenthood abortion center in may 2009.
The hearing covered disputed subpoenas filed by Kline and the high court will eventually determine whether subpoenas Kline issued for medical records from the Planned Parenthood facility can be enforced.
Operation Rescue, which is still waiting for the verdict, released a statewide radio commentary today playing on Christian radio stations on the Bott Radio Network that it says "exposes how the Kansas Supreme Court’s delay in ruling on issues related to 107 criminal charges against Planned Parenthood is obstructing justice, shaking confidence in the judicial system, and enabling abortionists to continue to flout the law."
In the radio spot, OR president Troy Newman quotes former Chief Justice Warren Berger who said the public needs to have a "sense of confidence in the courts" to "maintain the fabric of ordered liberty for a free people."
The case against Planned Parenthood began over seven years ago with no end of delays in sight, Newman complains.
"Time and again over the course of three years, Kline’s subpoenas were questioned in legal maneuverings before the Kansas Supreme Court. Finally in October, 2006, Kline received the abortion records," he said.
Before the evidence could be fully analyzed, Kline was defeated as Attorney General, but in an unusual twist, was immediately appointed as District Attorney of the same Kansas county where Planned Parenthood operates.
In June, 2007, the new pro-abortion Attorney General, Paul Morrison, issued a letter "clearing" Planned Parenthood of any wrong-doing. This letter disturbed Judge Richard Anderson, who was the custodian of the evidence and the judge who had been involved in overseeing Kline’s investigations.
Six months later, Morrison was forced to resign in disgrace amid a scandal involving his attempts to persuade his illicit lover in the DA’s office to obstruct Kline’s abortion investigations.
Finally, in October, 2007, Kline filed the charges but the new Attorney General, Steven Six, who was appointed by pro-abortion ex-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius placed a gag order on Judge Anderson and the evidence against Planned Parenthood. Anderson was told not to comply with the District Attorney’s subpoenas.
Now, following the May hearing, the case languishes in limbo.
"It would take a book to fully tell the tale of governmental obstruction and corruption in this case," said Newman. "The worst thing about it is that the people involved in shielding Planned Parenthood from prosecution expect those of us who want the laws enforced to sit down, shut up, and forget about it."
"If we don’t, then we are subject to having our reputations attacked and destroyed, as they attempted to do to the original prosecutors in this case. We must keep this case in the public eye," he told LifeNews.com.
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