How Puppy Love Became a Sex Crime
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Tue Apr 25, 2006 at 02:25:28 AM EST
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From last Saturday's New York Times:

Kiss-and-Tell No More

A federal judge in Kansas has dealt another blow to the crusade by the state's attorney general, Phill Kline, to restrict abortions under the phony banner of combating child abuse.

In February, the Kansas Supreme Court blocked Mr. Kline from invading the medical privacy of 90 women and girls who were treated at two abortion clinics. This week, a federal trial judge in Wichita killed Mr. Kline's daft idea to require doctors, school counselors and psychotherapists, among others, to report all sexual activity by people under 16, from kissing to sexual intercourse.
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It seems too much to hope that this will end the matter, since Mr. Kline is likely to appeal, and anti-abortion groups are eager to expand the use of child-abuse reporting laws. But for the moment, the thoughtful new ruling gives supporters of medical privacy and reproductive freedom a victory.

Just about no one in Kansas would expect Phill Kline to give up now - not the man who says God asked him to run for Attorney General.

In a PBS NOW interview, Kline claimed that his dogged pursuit of alleged sex crimes against minors was more than just a pretext for prosecuting providers of abortion care and family planning services, but NOW's David Brancaccio caught him in a whopper.  

DAVID BRANCACCIO: But if you're worried about the issue of kids being raped and exploitation of kids, why not also seek medical records about very young 12 and 13-year-old kids who've had babies but haven't had abortions, and go after those medical records? Why were they pregnant in those cases?

ATTORNEY GENERAL KLINE: You assume we haven't.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well, have you done that?

ATTORNEY GENERAL KLINE: Yes. Certainly, we look at all instances of child exploitation.

BRANCACCIO: NOW canvassed hospitals near Planned Parenthood's headquarters - none reported receiving subpoenas for medical records.

As Talk to Action's own mrblifil observed in a comment to the Lawrence Journal-World, "Uh oh. Phill made a whoopsie."

By concentrating on late abortion procedures on teens, as if that were evidence of child rape, he let the cat out of the bag that the overwhelming majority of teen pregnancies in Kansas are carried to term. Therefore the real trove of evidence is in the state's delivery rooms and neo-natal care units. But then everybody would know that Kansas is rife with teen immorality, so he changed horses in mid-stream and started "crusading" against all teen sex. This way he has the luxury of avoiding accountability for his actions by being laughed out of court, in hopes that people will forget the precepts under which he began his witch hunt in the first place.

Kline's tactic of pressuring health care providers to turn their minor patients into the authorities as sex offenders was almost certainly inspired by Life Dynamics International -- a Denton, Texas-based antiabortion organization fronted by Mark Crutcher, whose amazing resemblance to Karl Rove is more than skin deep. Crutcher says that he dreams of an America where abortion is still legal, but nobody can get one.

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Life Dynamics displays an online directory of 737 clinics in the United States that offer abortion care -- or, as Crutcher vividly styles them, Death Camps.
Against a spookily gothic background graphic evoking images of torture that would have warmed the heart of the Marquis de Sade, the "Death Camps" page of the LDI site encourages its readers to lend assistance in cleansing America of . . . well, people like me.

This page lists every abortion clinic in America, so that you can be encouraged as we countdown toward victory. Rest assured, Life Dynamics will not stop until every one of these death camps is closed and the American holocaust is over.

Fax corrections to Life Dynamics at 940-380-8700
or call us at 940-380-8800 or click here to let us know:

  • if you see a mistake on this site
  • if a new death camp opens
  • if a death camp closes
  • if a death camp changes locations.

Naturally enough, Phill Kline says, "I don't understand the problem with Life Dynamics."

However, when asked whether his Kansas crusade against abortion providers was assisted by LDI, Kline hastened to deny that he was working in association with Crutcher's gro