Olathe, Kansas – The Johnson County District Attorney’s office has asked Judge Stephen Tatum for a continuance of a preliminary hearing scheduled to begin Monday morning in the criminal case against a Kansas Planned Parenthood abortion clinic.
According to the Associated Press, prosecutors tried to get “a number” of abortion reporting records that Planned Parenthood filed with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) in 2003. The KDHE told prosecutors that the records in question had been destroyed sometime in 2005.
During that year, then-Attorney General Phill Kline was investigating abortion clinics, but his subpoenas for abortion records from Planned Parenthood and another Kansas abortion clinic were delayed in the Kansas Supreme Court. The Kansas State Board of Healing Arts was investigating the third trimester abortion death of Christin Gilbert while the Legislature, prompted by Gilbert’s death and a rash of documented emergency transports from a Wichita abortion clinic, was attempting to pass clinic regulations that were opposed by then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who now serves as Pres. Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Planned Parenthood has been charged with 107 counts of illegal late-term abortions and manufacturing evidence to cover their alleged crimes based partly on the KDHE reporting records that seemed to have been tampered with. (View a copy of one set of these documents and read background.)
“KDHE aggressively resisted complying with any subpoena for those reporting records for years and now it seems we may know why,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “This revelation of record destruction comes under a new administration that is more open and honest than previous administration, which was sympathetic and protective of abortion. During the Sebelius Administration, KDHE did everything in their power to conceal the fact that the incriminating records had been destroyed. This only gives fuel to the belief that massive corruption under Sebelius thwarted bringing abortionists to justice who were breaking the law.”
How this news will affect the future of the prosecution of Planned Parenthood is unknown.
The District Attorney’s office told Operation Rescue today that Judge Tatum is expected to rule on the prosecution’s motion for a delay of the preliminary hearing on Monday at 9:00 AM.
Read Timeline of efforts to bring Planned Parenthood to justice.