More Evidence Against Kansas Planned Parenthood Lost

Religion Today | Published: Nov 13, 2011

More Evidence Against Kansas Planned Parenthood Lost

A potential political scandal in Kansas grew wider last week as Johnson County District Attorney Stephen Howe revealed that a former state attorney in 2009 destroyed copies of records important to the prosecution of abortion provider Planned Parenthood, WORLD News Service reports. The documents were copies of records that the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) had destroyed in 2005 in what it called a "routine" shredding, and Howe said the legal hurdles were "insurmountable" to prosecute Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri on 23 felony counts of forging client records and 26 misdemeanor counts. The revelations came more than two weeks after Howe had asked the court for more time to gather evidence after learning of the KDHE's 2005 shredding of records related to the case. In seeking to gather more evidence, Howe learned that former Kansas Attorney General Steve Six, a Democrat appointed by then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, had destroyed copies of those records in 2009. Howe suggested Six's destruction of the copies might have violated the state's records retention policy, and an investigation is expected. Mary Kay Culp of Kansans for Life called on the Kansas legislature to review the entire case: "Guilty people destroy evidence," she said. "Really guilty people destroy evidence twice."

More Evidence Against Kansas Planned Parenthood Lost