Patience and Providence: Phill Kline’s six-year investigation of Planned Parenthood planted seeds that are now, finally, bearing fruit

The new attorney general, Republican Phill Kline, was poking around state agencies looking for figures and documents related to Planned Parenthood and late-term abortionist George Tiller, both staunch political allies of the governor. It soon became obvious what Kline was after: He had discovered that Planned Parenthood and Tiller were regularly performing abortions on girls under age 15 (166 over 18 months), but during that time they reported only one of those cases each to the state as child rape. 



State agencies tried to stonewall the investigation, resisting Kline’s efforts to obtain the documents he needed to file misdemeanor charges of failing to report child rape. Over the next six years, the Sebelius political machine and the Kansas legal establishment so effectively vilified Kline publicly he was twice booted from public office. This month a state disciplinary board recommended that he be stripped of his law license in Kansas even though two previous ethics investigations had cleared him. (See “Vengeance on the prairie,” May 21, and “‘All a diversion,’” Oct. 20.) But the problem, instead of going away, somehow just keeps getting worse. Planned Parenthood is now facing the 107 criminal charges that Kline managed to file just before losing his job as Johnson County, Kans., district attorney in 2008. Most are misdemeanors for failing to keep proper client records and properly determining the viability of late-term babies before performing abortions—all of those charges arose during the initial investigation into child rape.

H/T Tim Challies