Crazy Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline is at it again. First, he was subpoenaing women’s private medical records. Then, he was attempted to ban Medicaid funding of abortion and defined “life” as beginning at conception. But he’s not finished.
But striving for the 2006 pro-life trifecta, Kline is also embroiled in a lawsuit over the mandatory reporting of all teen snogging in Kansas. The trial, which opened on Monday in federal district court, surrounds Kline’s 2003 advisory opinion on the state’s mandatory reporting law. While Kansas is one of 12 states in which sex under a certain age—16, 17, or 18—is always presumed illegal, regardless of consent or the age difference between the partners, Kline’s written interpretation of Kansas’ reporting law makes it the only state requiring that doctors, nurses, counselors, and all other care providers report—as abuse—any sexual interaction between teens under 16. Failure to report is a misdemeanor. Under Kline’s view, professionals must report even when the sex is consensual, committed with partners their age, and where there is no suspicion of injury. The plaintiffs who filed suit—a group of doctors, nurses, and counselors—contend that under Kline’s policy, even evidence of teen necking must be reported.
This could mean finally putting a stop to the wanton actions of such teen harlots as Betty, Veronica, and Sandra Dee.
In their complaint, the health care providers, represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, urge that while they support the reporting of all suspected sexual abuse of minors, the reporting of all nonabusive consensual sexual activity threatens their confidential relationships and would have a chilling effect on teen efforts to seek healthcare—including lifesaving HIV testing, birth control, and counseling. The attorney general’s office argues that there is a legitimate state interest in stopping child abuse.
This is absolutely ridiculous. Being under 18 doesn’t negate your privacy rights, and doesn’t do away with doctor-patient confidentiality. Obviously abusive situations should be reported, but mandating that doctors file a report because Jane was making out with Steve seems a little over-reaching.
Of course, it’s not really about protecting kids from abuse at all. It’s about going after abortion providers.
Finally, Kline takes the not-illogical position that since all consensual teen sex is criminal, all teen abortion records provide vital evidence of that crime. Why, then, doesn’t he subpoena all hospital records for evidence of all teen births? Is it possible that he is less interested in pursuing the real crime of teen sex than the non-crime of abortion? In two and a half years Kline’s sweeping assertion that all health-care providers must report all teen intimate activity has morphed into demands for reports of consensual teenage sex that result in abortions. Which leads to the conclusion that the Kansas reporting law isn’t intended to increase reports of child abuse, but to increase reports of teen sex—specifically from abortion providers. Which means that this law—along with Kline’s attempts to subpoena state abortion records and force Kansas doctors performing abortions on girls under 14 to preserve fetal tissue—is part of the attorney general’s single-minded use of his vast authority in the sole interest of hassling Kansas’ abortion providers.
Kline has vociferously argued that every abortion is murder, even though the law of the land holds otherwise. That is why he trusts his own judgment about what constitutes criminal activity over the judgment of the health professionals who actually see and treat it. One nevertheless wonders whether he should really be using all of his resources with no law enforcement purpose in sight beyond fishing through the files of state abortion clinics.