Today the Kansas Supreme Court will hear arguments from Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri and Women’s Health Care of Wichita in their appeal against the actions of ‘grand anti-choice inquisitor,’ the Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline. If you will remember, Kline had been going after women’s clinics in pursuit of obtaining medical records of minors under a bullshit subterfuge claiming to investigate and search for evidence of child sexual abuse and rape. Comprehensive Health’s and Planned Parenthood’s appeal to the Kansas Supreme Court; protection for the “covenant of privacy” between doctor and his/her patient. (via Planned Parenthood)
TOPEKA, KANSAS … On Thursday, September 8, 2005, the Kansas Supreme Court will hear arguments in Comprehensive Health’s appeal to protect the covenant between a doctor and his or her patient … a covenant of privacy that all citizens expect and deserve.
Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri and Women’s Health Care of Wichita are fighting to protect dozens of confidential patient records that have been subpoenaed as part of an “inquisition” (K.S.A Chapter 22) pursued by anti-choice Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline. […]
The subpoenas, prepared by Attorney General Kline’s office and issued by a Topeka court in September 2004, ordered Comprehensive Health and Women’s Health Care to hand over dozens of complete medical records of abortion patients, including identifying information and full medical and sexual histories.[…]
Comprehensive Health is a trusted provider of high quality reproductive health care and fully complies with the law. We share the goal of protecting children and young women from abuse and of ensuring compliance with Kansas abortion law. Comprehensive Health’s health care providers consistently cooperate with law enforcement to provide compassionate care to sexual assault survivors and to report suspected abuse.[…]
It’s increasingly clear that Attorney General Kline is mounting an all-out assault on the rights of women and men to make their own decisions in the most private and personal areas of their lives, free from intrusion by politicians.
General Kline’s recent suit against the Governor to block Medicaid clients from lifesaving care makes his objective more apparent. He clearly intends to deny women access to abortion, even to save their lives. Little wonder that he is willing to violate a woman’s privacy to pursue his extreme political agenda.[…]
Patients entrust the privacy and safe-keeping of their medical information to their doctors. Comprehensive Health cannot and will not violate this trust to serve the political agenda of the Attorney General. […]
Nothing like a little abuse of power in order to push a scare/intimidation-tactic based agenda against women’s reproductive rights, eh, Kline? Best of luck to PP of Kansas.
Sounds to me that this guy is on a fishing expedition. According to the vast legal knowledge I’ve accumulated by watching every episode of Law and Order at least 3 times, he can’t do this unless he’s got allegations of a specific incident of this, and then is limited to investigating that incident alone.
let’s see, he’s fishing to deterimine if any healthcare workers neglected to report possible sexual abuse of a minor as per Kansas Statute (sexual activity by a someone under 14). In order to do this, he wants access to records for those not affected by that law. All this and yet, he does not penalize the JoP who married an obviously pregnant 13-year old to the 21-year father of her child when that JoP did not, as an officer of the court, have the man arrested for child molestation. Yes, it’s obviously about routing out child molesters.