Former Kansas AG Kline Deserves Heavy Sanctions, Kansas City Star Opinion Piece States

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Pediatrics / Children's Health
Article Date: 25 Jan 2010 - 1:00 PDT

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Former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline (R) -- who led a "no-holds-barred crusade" against abortion provider George Tiller and a Planned Parenthood clinic -- deserves to be "heavily sanctioned for misusing a public position for a personal agenda," columnist Mary Sanchez writes in a Kansas City Star opinion piece. An ethics complaint released this week accuses Kline of committing a "myriad of galling actions" during his tenure, including "spying on cars at Tiller's clinic, running of license plates [and] checking phone records of patients' hotels," Sanchez writes. Yet all was "for naught," she adds, as "[n]othing was ever proven" against Tiller.

"[B]efore anyone bothers to cast a stone against the 'liberal, pro-abortion media,' let me restate my disdain for abortion," Sanchez continues. Nonetheless, abortion is legal, and the decision to undergo the procedure is "far more complicated ... for many women than its most ardent opponents often claim," she writes. "I can't imagine being one of the women whose medical records were left sitting in a state employee's dining room or copied at a Kinko's in the hunt for evidence that illegal abortions were performed on underage girls," Sanchez writes.

Kline was obligated "to uphold the law but apparently thought nothing of lying to cover his questionable if not unethical efforts, even to judges and a grand jury," Sanchez says, noting that "trodding over those women's rights gave him no pause." Kline's actions indicate that he was "an extremist at work, ... an obsessive with a let-nothing-stand-in-the-way approach," according to Sanchez (Sanchez, Kansas City Star, 1/21).

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