Stakes High in KS Planned Parenthood’s Criminal Case

Kansas City, Kansas – Representatives for Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri will appear in Judge Stephen Tatum’s courtroom on Monday, October 24 for a three-day Preliminary Hearing that will determine if the massive 107-criminal case against the abortion giant will proceed to trial. If it is not the first, it is certainly the largest criminal case in history to be brought against Planned Parenthood.
“This criminal case is pivotal and the stakes are high. If Planned Parenthood is found guilty of criminal conduct, it would disqualify them nationally from receiving Title X Federal tax dollars,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “The implications are tremendous, therefore you can bet the abortion cartel will stop at nothing to dismiss this case and hide the evidence against them forever.”
The charges against Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion supplier in Kansas, include:

23 felony counts of Making a False Information

26 misdemeanor counts of Unlawful Failure to Maintain Record

29 misdemeanor counts of Unlawful Failure to Determine Viability for a Late-Term Abortion

29 misdemeanor counts of Unlawful Late-Term Abortion

The case, filed in 2007, has a long and complex history.
“It would take a book to detail all the shady dealings that have gone on in this case to delay it and prevent the evidence against Planned Parenthood from being used in a court of law,” said Newman. “Now, eight years after the alleged crimes, we hope that the public will finally be allowed to hear testimony from witnesses that have been gagged and see evidence that has been sealed for years.”
The case actually began in 2003, when former Attorney General Phill Kline began investigating abortion clinics for non-compliance with child sex abuse reporting laws. He subpoenaed abortion records from the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Overland Park and George Tiller’s late-term abortion mill in Wichita, Kansas.
The abortion clinics fought hard to keep incriminating evidence from falling into the hands of law enforcement, and filed numerous actions with the Kansas Supreme Court in an effort to lock the evidence up forever. The legal maneuverings lasted years.
In October, 2006, Kline finally received over 90 heavily redacted copies of the abortion records he had sought through subpoena three years earlier. In the delay, the statute of limitations had run out on all but 29 cases. Those records and the related reporting documents on file with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), are the basis for the charges against Planned Parenthood.
After his defeat by Democrat Paul Morrison, Kline was then appointed as the new Johnson County District attorney where he eventually filed the criminal case against Planned Parenthood in October, 2007.
Planned Parenthood again took the case to the left-leaning Kansas Supreme Court in order to prevent the District Attorney’s office from using the evidence against them. Former Attorney General Steve Six, an appointee of radical abortion promoter and former governor, Kathleen Sebelius, intervened in the case on behalf of Planned Parenthood.
This is what happened.
Judge Anderson wonders who “cooked the books”
In January, 2008, Judge Richard Anderson gave testimony at a hearing in the Planned Parenthood case. He told of Kline coming to him with concerns that records had perhaps been over-redacted, and that it was possible that some documents had been “manufactured.”
Judge Anderson considered these concerns to be extremely serious, and embarked on his own investigation, taking certain documents to a Topeka Police handwriting expert for analysis. There was a discrepancy and Anderson immediately notified all parties involved. Below is one set of records to show the discrepancy — and the absurdly heavy redactions of the KDHE abortion reporting forms.
EvidencePPManufactured
[Explanation of document: Above you will see the front and back of two KDHE forms. They are supposed to be copies of the same form reporting one abortion. One copy was to be kept in the patient file and the other sent to the KDHE. However, these two forms for the same patient are written in a different hand, leading to the belief that Planned Parenthood manufactured the one in the patient file to cover for inadequate record keeping. Also, Planned Parenthood has repeatedly claimed that it does not do abortions beyond the 22 week legal limit in Kansas, but this abortion was done at 23 weeks along with the notation that there was no reasonable belief of viability. However, the viability boundaries have dropped and babies born at 23 weeks have a good chance of survival. Planned Parenthood has desperately worked to keep this evidence of criminal abortion and manufacturing records from getting to the public.]
“I had notified everyone that there was a questioned record,” Anderson testified, according to a partial transcript reprinted in the Supreme Court’s opinion. “I had written a letter and…distributed it to Mr. Kline, Mr. Morrison, the disciplinary administrator, the Supreme Court Chief Justice, and said there’s a problem with these records. I am going to sit tight. And I sat down like an old mule and just was going to sit on that until everything was cleared up.”
Six gags evidence and witnesses
In preparation for a preliminary hearing in the Planned Parenthood criminal case, Kline reissued subpoenas to Anderson and the KDHE. A motion to quash the subpoenas was held on April 3, 2008, was taken under advisement. That same day, Attorney General Six heard about the possibility that evidence could be presented at a preliminary hearing on April 7, 2008, and immediately filed an emergency motion for a protective order with the Kansas Supreme Court.
However, Six withheld important information in his emergency filing. He neglected to tell the Court that Anderson had previously testified at a hearing in January where the “manufactured” records had been discussed. He also failed to mention that the preliminary hearing had been delayed six weeks.
A gag order was issued by the Supreme Court on April 4, 2008, ordering Anderson not to testify or release any documents, while erroneously thinking that the information was still secret and that the preliminary hearing was only a couple of days away.
That gag order stood, delaying the prosecution of Planned Parenthood for over two years until October, 2010, when the Supreme Court modified their order to allow Anderson to testify and sent the case back to the District Court for prosecution.
Since then Planned Parenthood has been back to court in an unsuccessful effort to block the evidence from being used by the prosecution.
Will politics trump justice?

While politics should not be a factor in the quest for justice, the unfortunately reality is that it is all too often the case. However, in the 2010 mid-term elections the political landscape dramatically shifted in Kansas. While under the previous administration, abortion clinics were protected from accountability to the law, the new administration is now more interested in enforcing the laws.
The question that remains to be answered is whether the current District Attorney Steve Howe will do his duty or give a lackluster prosecution that will let Planned Parenthood off the hook.
Howe was also a political rival of Kline’s and although he professes to be a conservative law-and-order prosecutor, he carries baggage. Howe was a good friend and former employee of Morrison, who defeated Kline for Attorney General on the promise that he would stop the abortion clinic investigations. Morrison was later forced to resign in disgrace after news broke of his involvement in a sex and abortion corruption scandal. It was revealed he had attempted to use his illicit lover in the District Attorney’s office to spy on Kline’s abortion investigations so Morrison would know how to subvert them. Kline let Howe go upon taking over as District Attorney. Howe sued Kline, but lost. Howe was later elected as District Attorney, but since taking office, he has shown a lack of interest in an aggressive prosecution of the Planned Parenthood case.
The Public Must Continue to Call for Justice
“Laws might as well not exist if there is no enforcement. We have been at the forefront of this case, working with prosecutors and supplying them with information. We helped convene a citizen-called grand jury. We have applied public pressure that has helped keep this case in the public eye,” said Newman.
“It is imperative that we continue to urge the public to call for the laws to be enforced and for Planned Parenthood to be aggressively prosecuted. We believe the 107 charges are just the tip of the iceberg, but prosecutors around the country have been reticent to go after abortionists. This case could change that. Because so much is at stake you can bet that the abortion cartel is throwing everything they have at this in the way of pressure and money. We must counter to send the message that there should be no special privileges for abortionists.”
Operation Rescue plans to attend the hearings and report on the case as it develops.
Operation Rescue urges the public to contact the Johnson County District Attorney’s office and ask that there be no special privileges for abortionists. Planned Parenthood must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
To help Operation Rescue continue to hold the politician’s feet to the fire please click here to donate.
Contact: