Kansas Ethics Committee Targets Pro-Life Lawyer

Former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline—the only prosecutor in the U.S. who has ever brought charges against Planned Parenthood—is in the midst of a two-week hearing before the state ethics panel in Topeka.

Disciplinary Administrator Stanton Hazlett is looking to remove Kline’s law license, claiming he mishandled evidence against the nation’s largest abortion seller.

“This week’s hearing amounts to the tormenting of a man for doing his job,” columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez wrote at NationalReview.com. “And, God help him, for doing it while daring to believe that the whole culture of death is a corrosive evil.”

Kline was elected attorney general in 2002. When he began to investigate whether Planned Parenthood might be breaking the law, the abortion industry nationwide poured more than $2 million into the state to oppose his re-election. Not surprisingly, he lost.

Kline was allowed to retain jurisdiction over the Planned Parenthood investigation when he was appointed prosecutor of Johnson County. Less than a year later—in October 2007—he filed 107 criminal charges against Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, including 23 felonies. Those charges are pending.

Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, said, “The Left'”s biggest beef with Kline is that he subpoenaed medical records—which did not identify patients.

Kline, who now is teaching at Liberty University, is being defended by the Chicago-based Thomas More Society. Executive Director Peter Breen said the hearing is nothing more than a political witch hunt.

“This proceeding is not being brought in order to remedy serious and significant ethics violations to protect the public in some way,” he said. “It truly is being brought as a political move to punish Phill Kline for daring to investigate abortion clinics.”

Lopez said Kline should be applauded. “He should be considered a trailblazer, and a hero for women and children and law and justice,” she wrote. “Instead, Planned Parenthood and its allies plan to dance on his professional grave in the coming days, making him a disgraced former prosecutor for the history books.”