LJWorld.com : Kline’s clin­ic probe linked to abor­tion foe:

An anti-abor­tion cru­sad­er in Texas says his orga­ni­za­tion pro­vid­ed the evi­dence that led to Kansas Atty. Gen. Phill Kline’s con­tro­ver­sial inves­ti­ga­tion of two abor­tion clinics.

Life Dynam­ics pres­i­dent Mark Crutch­er said he had callers pre­tend­ing to be 13-year-old girls call abor­tion clin­ics across the coun­try, includ­ing four clin­ic offices in Kansas. The group says its tapes from the tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions prove the clin­ics are oper­at­ing illegally.

“The tapes from our inves­ti­ga­tion clear­ly prove that these peo­ple (abor­tion providers) are run­ning a pedophile pro­tec­tion rack­et,” Crutch­er said.

But abor­tion-rights groups say the appar­ent link between Life Dynam­ics and Kline, which Kline denies exists, is evi­dence that the attor­ney gen­er­al is using the pow­er of his office to advance an anti-abor­tion agen­da and appease his con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal base. …

Crutch­er said Life Dynam­ics had pro­vid­ed attor­neys gen­er­al in sev­er­al states with tran­scripts and tapes of tele­phone calls from the group’s attempt­ed sting oper­a­tions in Feb­ru­ary and March of 2002, in which a caller pos­es as a 13-year-old girl who says she’s preg­nant by her 22-year-old boyfriend. Say­ing she’s afraid her dis­ap­prov­ing par­ents will find out, she asks about an abortion.

On the tapes, the caller does not iden­ti­fy her­self and is not asked to iden­ti­fy herself.

Crutch­er said Life Dynam­ics had tapes of more than 800 calls to dozens of abor­tion clin­ics through­out the Unit­ed States, includ­ing sev­er­al in Kansas.

On record­ings Crutch­er pro­vid­ed to the Jour­nal-World, he says the con­ver­sa­tions are of work­ers in clin­ics in Shawnee Mis­sion, Wichi­ta, Hays and Over­land Park, heard telling the girl how to get an abor­tion with­out her par­ents find­ing out, how to keep her boyfriend out of trou­ble and how to obtain birth con­trol pills.

In Kansas, if a 22-year-old adult has sex with a 13-year-old juve­nile, it is con­sid­ered statu­to­ry rape.

Accord­ing to Crutch­er, the tapes prove that abor­tion clin­ics have con­spired to pro­tect the iden­ti­ties of rapists, many of whom, he said, are sex­u­al preda­tors. And by sup­ply­ing birth con­trol pills to a 13-year-old girl who has said she is in a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with a 22-year-old man, he said, the clin­ics are, in effect, pro­tect­ing and per­pet­u­at­ing the relationship. …

[ProKan­Do direc­tor Julie] Burkhart and [Planned Par­ent­hood of Kansas and Mid-Mis­souri CEO Peter] Brown­lie said it’s nei­ther wrong nor ille­gal to answer an anony­mous teenager’s ques­tions about the state’s abor­tion laws. Both said clin­ic coun­selors would have asked the caller to make an appoint­ment, dur­ing which ques­tions about the rela­tion­ship and the boyfriend’s age would have been asked.

“We would nev­er do that over the phone because we would have no way to ver­i­fy who’s on the oth­er end of the line,” Brown­lie said. “And, frankly, these aren’t the kind of things you talk about over the phone.”

Brown­lie and Bill Hoch, spokesman for Tiller’s clin­ic, Wom­en’s Health Ser­vices, said if the girl had come to the clin­ic and if coun­selors had con­firmed that she was 13 and her boyfriend was 22, a report would have been filed with the Kansas Depart­ment of Social and Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Ser­vices’ Child Abuse Hotline.

“Absolute­ly, with­out a doubt,” Hoch said.

“The sit­u­a­tion you’re describ­ing — she’s 13, he’s 22 — would fit with­in our under­stand­ing of abuse,” Brown­lie said. “It would be report­ed to the SRS hot line, that’s our pol­i­cy and our practice.”

I think it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that there’s a huge line between some­one say­ing they’re a 13 year-old with a 22 year-old boyfriend, and there actu­al­ly being a vic­tim of statu­to­ry rape on the phone. If these tran­scripts are the basis for Kline’s attempt to rif­fle through peo­ple’s med­ical records, he should drop it. 

The fact that these calls are being made, appar­ent­ly pret­ty fre­quent­ly, is exact­ly why clin­ics would­n’t make the effort to call in every ques­tion­able call. To the extent that these groups have a legit­i­mate point (young girls should­n’t be hav­ing sex with adults) they are hurt­ing their mis­sion by being the boy who cried wolf. The more false pos­i­tives there are in the sys­tem, the less like­ly some­one is to raise the alarm, If every girl who called and said she was 13 and preg­nant by some­one over 18 actu­al­ly was all of that, peo­ple would raise the alarm every time. If there are all these fake calls going around, bet­ter to exam­ine the girl first.