KS PP prosecution delayed by state-destroyed evidence

The pre-trial hearing for the felony prosecution of Planned Parenthood of Mid-Missouri Kansas has been delayed til Nov. 9  because 23 Planned Parenthood-specific state abortion reports have been discovered as destroyed.

Judge Stephen Tatum granted the continuance due to the state’s plea that only recently had they learned that crucial evidence for proving a forgery –original copies of those state late-term abortion compliance reports from Planned Parenthood– had been destroyed in 2005 by the state of Kansas Health department (KDHE) under Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

Despite requests, the KDHE has not yet issued a public comment on this bombshell that it had actually destroyed selective documents.

Back in 2005, Sebelius was losing her fight to keep various subpoenaed state information relevant to illegal post–viability abortions away from then-Attorney General Phill Kline.  Kline had attained what’s called “probable cause” that crimes had been committed and was seeking patient files.  But he had also seen copies of these state compliance reports which bore no patient names but were important because they had been filed with bogus language where legitimate medical reasons were supposed to have been supplied.

Political machinations swallowed those anticipated big-gun prosecutions.  Kline lost his 2006 re-election campaign, but became the District attorney for Johnson County, the home of the Kansas Planned Parenthood abortion facility.   He lodged 107 criminal charges against Planned Parenthood in October 2007, including 23 felony counts for allegedly forging copies of the 2003 state reports in August 2006.

The case was repeatedly stalled when KDHE steadfastly refused to bring the original reports to court in 2008 and never gave a hint that the 23 reports had already been destroyed 3 years earlier!

Read Full Post »

Sebelius agency destroyed evidence for PP criminal case

Abortion reports gone under Gov. Sebelius in 2005

Another layer to the depth of the Sebelius abortion corruption has been revealed with today’s AP report (here, updated here) that in 2005 the Kansas health department (KDHE) destroyed the state late-term abortion reports at the heart of the felony charges against Planned Parenthood.

The pre-trial hearing for felony “false-writing” charges had been scheduled for Monday Oct. 24, 25 and 26 in the Johnson County.   Since the original ”official” Kansans Department of  Health and Environment (KDHE) abortion reports have now been discovered as destroyed, the Johnson County District attorney’s office is asking for a delay so they can engage other witnesses to verify the authenticity of copies of the state reports.

The state reports are verifications that abortionists send to KDHE for statistical purposes, and are annually tabulated and published. Copies of those reports are required to be kept in the patient medical files. Of crucial importance is that these reports fail to provide valid medical reasons why banned post-viability abortions were performed. They are evidence of illegal abortion.

Planned Parenthood tells the AP that they “recently” became aware of the destruction and that it was not done at their request. What is not yet known is

1. when exactly Planned Parenthood knew;
2. whether paper copies or electronic files—or both—were destroyed;
3. who actually did the deed and under what orders;
4. whether other reports from George Tiller were destroyed;
5. whether similar reports in other years have been destroyed.

KFL Executive Director, Mary Kay Culp, commented, “Only guilty people destroy evidence!  Not even we anticipated Sebelius and her administration could stoop this low

Read Full Post »

Marten orders Kansas to pay clinic, doesn’t fear reversal

Shortly after Tuesday’s 45-minute hearing, federal district Judge Thomas Marten once again issued a written ruling stomping on Kansas’ state sovereignty.

He allowed the ACLU-represented Dodge City Family Planning (DCFP) clinic to join Planned Parenthood in halting the new Kansas family planning proviso. This marks the third failing clinic Marten has funded through an injunctive action.

The state of Kansas has already appealed his earlier injunction for Planned Parenthood to the 10th Circuit court of appeals and action there is not anticipated for at least 6 weeks.

DCFP had asked for $40,000 plus attorney fees. Absent any 10th Circuit action, Marten ordered the state to immediately pay DCFP an unspecified amount with another ‘quarterly payment’ in six weeks.

Marten relies heavily on one DCFP-employee affidavit that they alone could provide family planning for hundreds of low-income, minority women in Dodge City. However, in an Oct.13 rebuttal brief, the state presented facts that Ford County (home to DCFP) continues “to have access to family planning services through

1. private providers,
2. a Federally Qualified Health Center (“FQHC”), the over-$2-million-dollar-funded United Methodist Mexican-American Ministries in Dodge City, which chose not to apply to be a Title X delegate agency because of the lawsuit,and
3. nearby delegate agencies, totaling 16 nearby clinics.”

The defense added,” the State of Kansas will continue to ensure the availability of, and access to, a wider variety of critical medical services to those Kansans most in need. In essence, the only entity that would “win” from injunctive relief would be DCFP, not the low income Kansans for whom Title X was enacted.”

Marten insists

Read Full Post »

Judge Marten hearing recalls past rebuked injunction

On Oct. 11, Judge Thomas Marten allowed the 2-person Dodge City Family Planning (DCFP) to piggyback onto Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit against Kansas’ Title X new eligibility requirements.

Marten agreed DCFP had a claim to “irreparable harm” under the state proviso that Marten has repeatedly declared violates federal language. The failing southwestern Kansas clinic wants $40,000 from state coffers as Marten has already forced the state to send $58,000 to Planned Parenthood.

But after receiving the State’s Oct.13 rebuttal that enumerates the real facts about DCFP, Marten scheduled a Tues. Oct.18 hearing on the matter.  He may be reconsidering his hasty addition of the clinic to the current injunction.

Marten is a federal judge appointed for life; he can only be removed by Congress and it hasn’t impeached any federal judge in many decades. But one thing judges don’t like to do is rack up appellate court reversals –

especially the kind of rebuke Marten was dished in 2006 when his preliminary injunction favoring abortion clinics was overturned.

Marten had issued an injunction to stop Attorney General Phill Kline’s official interpretation that the law required

Read Full Post »

Judge Marten injunctions, Kline saga & Neuhaus evidence

Three politically-charged events are actually deeply interlocked: unjustified injunctions from Judge Thomas Marten, a state Supreme Court-supervised panel ruling against Phill Kline, and the defense lawyer for Kris Neuhaus showing abortion files without permission.

The state of Kansas is currently appealing a Title X injunctive order for Planned Parenthood from Judge Marten, which echoes a situation seven years ago when he issued an abortion-helping preliminary injunction that was  overturned on appeal. Then Marten reinstated the injunction permanently!

In that case, abortion clinics and counselors had sued then-Attorney General Phill Kline for issuing an opinion that clinics needed to report all pregnant minors to law enforcement agencies.  Under child protective law, all physicians, counselors & teachers were required to report children injured (now the word is “harmed”) by physical, mental, or emotional abuse or neglect, or sexual abuse.”

Kline was aiming at prosecuting unreported statutory rape by adult predators, not ‘Romeo-Juliet’ pregnancy situation. For example during 2002-2003, 168 underage pregnant girls were aborted in Kansas but abortion clinics only reported 2!

Marten ruled that Kline’s opinion threatened the “informational privacy rights” of minors and that such was an ‘irreparable harm’ that trumped state child rape law.

Now we come to the second entangled matter: Thursday’s 3-person panel issuance that Kline’s professional actions violated attorney standards.

Notably, Kline is being punished by abortion defenders-in-high-places for daring to prosecute the abortion industry. The second charge of the panel is Kline’s supposedly deficient legal advice about abuse reporting to a grand jury investigating Planned Parenthood. In actuality, pro-abortion attorneys tried to confuse lay people on the jury about the Marten injunctions in relation to subpoenas for clinic records.

Invading abortion privacy/secrecy has been the heart of Kline’s supposed “crime” as formulated by the abortion cartel, former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and “third wave” feminist–and state Supreme Court Justice– Carol Beier.  It is the Democrat appointees who now dominate the State Supreme Court, in control of the ethics action against Kline. Language in the ethics charges come straight out of abortion attorney filings!

Medical privacy –not child safety–was the war cry used to dump Kline, after the courts had successfully tied up his prosecution of illegal late-term abortion until days before his 2006 re-election vote. And not one identity of an abortion patient has EVER been made public from Kline’s investigations or during file-handling by citizen-petitioned grand juries.

This is where the third matter of Neuhaus becomes entwined.  Eleven of the very abortion records ferreted out by Kline–at the expense of his political career–are being used by the state Board of Healing Arts i

Read Full Post »

Judge Marten lets ACLU/Kansas clinic join PP lawsuit

Judge Marten, upholds clinics, not state law

Today, federal Judge Thomas Marten unsurprisingly acquiesced to ACLU’s petition that the Dodge City Family Planning (DCFP) clinic join the Planned Parenthood lawsuit over Title X money distributed by the Kansas state health department.

The clinic wants immediate reinstatement of their prior Title X state contract for nearly $40,000 (plus attorney fees), and wants the state proviso declared void as violating the Supremacy Clause.

Marten has already awarded $58,000 to Planned Parenthood without a state contract and the state is appealing his rulings to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Marten’s ruling today bristled at the state’s allegation that DCFP was ‘judge-shopping’, that is, piggy-backing onto a case where the judge is already favorably directing funding to clinics.

There’s no question this is an activist judge of whom the State legal team accuses of “emasculating” state sovereignty and repeatedly ruling in error about the legitimacy of the state funding proviso.

Marten defended the addition of the financially-failing DCFP clinic because “it was stripped of Title X funding essentially as collateral of the Kinzer Amendment’s redefinition of eligibility standards.…[and] asserts a Supremacy Clause claim similar to that advanced by plaintiff Planned Parenthood.”

Read Full Post »

ACLU wants more Kansas money issued by Judge Marten

Now that Judge Thomas Marten has been found willing to violate Kansas state sovereignty by ordering Title X payments to Planned Parenthood without a contract, the ACLU is demanding another failing clinic get a piece of the action.

In August, Marten granted Planned Parenthood a halt to the new Kansas budget proviso directing that Title X family planning money managed by the state health department be contracted primarily with full-service public clinics.

Kansas’ legal team argues that although Marten “found no specific conflict between the language of the state statute and the federal statute, [he] nonetheless struck down the statute because of the Legislature’s alleged bad motive.” (The bad motive is allegedly punishing abortion providers.)

Kansas has been forced already to fork over a payment of $58,000 to Planned Parenthood and last week submitted a 144-page appeal to the 10th circuit court to overturn Marten’s ruling.

Now the Dodge City Family Planning Clinic is complaining 40% of their funding ($38,000) was lost due to exclusion under the new Title X proviso, and thus they should be added as a party in the Planned Parenthood lawsuit. (Actually, this makes the state’s case that the proviso was neutral in applicability and did NOT target abortion providers!)

Read Full Post »

Abortion clinics and N.O.W. testify vs new KS regulations

Rep. Mast recounted constituent reports of abortion abuse

Abortion supporters demanded abortion be made legal so it could be safe.  Thus, it is they who should be at the forefront of hounding state officials to monitor and close woman-injuring, outrageously deficient abortion businesses. But they are not.

Kansas abortion facility oversight was introduced in 2002 and has been shepherded by Kansans for Life through its passage this spring as House substitute bill 36.

The need for such a law was based originally on a corrupt State Healing Arts Board that ignored documented abortionist malfeasance, including 4 (later, 5) patient deaths.

In Kansas, any physician who has failed in another medical field (including a lung specialist, and a psychiatrist) can “take up abortion” without formal ob/gyn training. Patient mistreatment and botched abortions do not quickly catch up with such practitioners because

the shame factor hinders injured women from contacting state regulators or filing lawsuits as freely as they would for other kinds of medical malpractice.

From the outset, Kansas abortionists have adamantly denied the validity of state inspection and that position continued today at a public hearing required before abortion licensure regulations can become permanent.

The new health agency regulations were blasted as ridiculous, “written by committees without doctors” and “not helpful to women” (!) by N.O.W, Planned Parenthood executives and abortionist Herb Hodes (who’s suing the regulations).

Rep. Peggy Mast (R-Emporia) attended today’s hearing and was especially irritated by such assertions. She testified it was unbelievable that an organization that claims to speak for women could

Read Full Post »

Another win/loss for So.Dakota pro-life laws stuck in court

Mother's "relationship" to unborn child finally wins in court

South Dakota scored a win when a 3-member appeals panel ruled Friday that abortion-seeking women must be informed they have a legally protected “existing relationship” with their unborn child.

Unfortunately, the same Eighth circuit panel upheld a lower court decision quashing an informed consent warning to women that abortion elevates suicide risk; the court opined the link was unproven and may not exist.

Ironically, on the very same day, came news of a huge “study of studies” in a prestigious psychiatric journal, which supports what certain judges bristle at– that abortion causes significant mental harms.

So why can one court deny the existence of what an international journal exposes? Because not one official U.S. study on abortion harms has ever been conducted.  Somehow, the National institute of Health and the Center for Disease Control have managed to ignore studying the most common elective surgery done on women– abortion.

This criminal absence of authentic scientific studies on abortion by governmental health authorities helps activist judges use Planned Parenthood arguments to stall pro-life laws.

Although Kansas is in a different appellate division (the tenth) from South Dakota, the latter’s experience with pro-abortion rulings from U.S. District Judge Karen Schreier and Eighth Circuit court of appeals Judge, Diana Murphy are illustrative.

In 2002, Schreier ruled against a 1973 South Dakota law requiring hospitalization for abortions in the second & third trimester abortions because   determining gestational age was an ‘impermissible

Read Full Post »

Kansas to pay PP, will continue appeal of bad ruling

UPDATE, Sept.7:  payment of $58,000 has been made to Planned Parenthood.
Yesterday, Judge Thomas Marten ordered an immediate state payment of approximately $80,000 to Planned Parenthood of Kansas Mid-Missouri for Title X family planning services.

The Kansas Attorney General’s Office issued this statement this morning to Kansans for Life: “The state will comply with the Judge’s order but will continue its appeal to the Tenth Circuit United States Court of Appeals.”

It’s mind-boggling that this judge thinks he has the authority to give taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood with no legal basis.

Marten continues to pretend this is a free speech case in which Planned Parenthood was denied participation as punishment for their abortion involvement.  However, the Kansas budget provision being sued, that prioritizes full service public clinics, also resulted in a lack of a Title X contract for another ‘family-planning-only’ business unrelated to Planned Parenthood or abortion.

The judge ignores both the fundamental contractual issue and the state’s rock-solid objections:

1) There is no federal right to apply for, or receive, Title X funds from the state; thus Planned Parenthood has not been denied any right that Marten should rectify.
Only the federal government must accept applications for Title X grants, thus Planned Parenthood can only claim the right to apply directly to HHS for a grant, as other Planned Parenthood businesses have done in some states.

2) The Eleventh Amendment governing state sovereignty bars any judge from entering a mandatory injunction requiring the state to enter into contract with Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood’s suit demands that the state “honor their contracts” but there is no 2011-2012 contract with Planned Parenthood to honor/restore. This is the third time Marten has ruled on the case and ignored this foundational issue.

Read Full Post »