Friday, February 25, 2005

He wants names!

Echidne spotlights the Kansas AG's recent attempts to get a hold of the medical records of women who have had late-term abortions.

What's not made clear in any of the articles I've read about this is what late term abortions have to do with child rape? Are these two issues supposed to be linked in some way? The article says Kline has been pushing to make health care professionals report the sexual activity of 16yr olds and under... is this latest attempt an extention of those efforts? Looking between the lines (because once again, the mainstream press has left a hell of a lot out); they refer to the patients whose medical records the AG is seeking as "women" and not girls or children. As bad as journalistic integrity has gotten recently, I don't believe the copy editors would let that slip if he were wanting to get the medical records of 16 yr olds.

I'm not against compiling better statistics on abortion and possible child rape. I've made it clear I'd love to have better statistics on the cases of violence against pregnant women, too. The critical difference here, people is that the clinic has offered to give the AG the information he wants but with the names edited out... and that's not good enough. That makes it perfectly clear that he's not interested in unbiased investigation of a troubling trend in order to try to curb that trend. His only interest is in criminally prosecuting individual women who have had late term abortions.

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