Topeka ? Kansas Atty. Gen. Phill Kline said Tuesday he would file, on behalf of the state, legal briefs supporting the federal ban on so-called partial-birth abortions.

The ban was declared unconstitutional by a federal district court judge in San Francisco and is also being challenged in federal district courts in Nebraska and New York.

Kline said he would join the Justice Department’s appeal in the San Francisco case, file briefs in other courts and argue the Supreme Court wrongfully decided the 1973 Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion.

“The only difference between a born child and a child killed by a partial-birth abortion is a few inches and a few judges,” Kline said in a news release.

State advocates of abortion rights were critical of Kline.

“It is unconscionable that Phill Kline has no understanding of the tragedy women experience in truly crisis pregnancies and wants to come between women and the medical care they need,” said Cynthia Mathis, state coordinator of Kansas National Organization for Women.

President Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act on Nov. 5, criminalizing a procedure that doctors call intact dilation and extraction. The procedure may involve partially removing a fetus from its mother’s womb to terminate it. Critics of the procedure call it partial-birth abortion.

Kline said his move to get involved in the legal battle was consistent with a resolution passed by the state House in 2002, which required the attorney general to file an action challenging Roe v. Wade and to seek an answer to the question of when rights attach to a fetus.

Kline said supporting the Justice Department’s appeal of the recent ruling would also serve to protect a Kansas law that prohibits the procedure.