Kline probe goes beyond abor­tions:

Atty. Gen. Phill Kline’s desire to get the med­ical records of 90 patients who received abor­tions is part of a much broad­er inves­ti­ga­tion than he has pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed, it was revealed Thursday.

Dur­ing oral argu­ments before the Kansas Supreme Court, Kline’s chief deputy, Eric Ruck­er, said that Kline was inves­ti­gat­ing a wide range of alle­ga­tions of child rape, ille­gal late-term abor­tions and fail­ure by clin­ics to report instances of child abuse.

The inves­ti­ga­tion also has spilled over into prob­ing births by under­age girls, Ruck­er said.

“Doc­u­ment­ed evi­dence of child rape, incest or oth­er sex­u­al felonies exist­ed with­in a num­ber of records,” Ruck­er said, empha­siz­ing that the clin­ics were tar­gets of the investigation.

But Ruck­er, under ques­tion­ing from Jus­tice Car­ol Beier, con­ced­ed that Kline, an ardent oppo­nent of abor­tion, had request­ed sub­poe­nas of records only from clin­ics that offered abor­tions and not records of any­one else who is required to report child abuse, such as teach­ers and health care professionals.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the clin­ics oper­at­ed by Wichita’s Dr. George Tiller, a long­time foe of Kline’s, and Planned Par­ent­hood in Over­land Park denied any wrong­do­ing and accused Kline of going on a “fish­ing expe­di­tion” and play­ing to his polit­i­cal base by try­ing to intim­i­date women seek­ing abortions.

There can be no doubt that that’s what it is. If the con­cern was child rape, incest or oth­er ille­gal acts against chil­dren, the clin­ics should be only one part of inves­ti­ga­tion, which should include every hos­pi­tal and pedi­a­tri­cian in the state as well as school teach­ers, nurs­es and coun­selors. If the aim is to go after the clin­ics, the iden­ti­ties of patients should be kept pri­vate to the extent pos­si­ble. But just say­ing “Hey, we want the records, we’ll get back to you if we find any­thing amiss,” does­n’t cut it.

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