To the editor:

Let’s discuss Atty. Gen. Phill Kline’s sessions with the Scopes Six from the Kansas State Board of Education and his hunt for abortion records:

The Kansas Open Meetings Act requires that a majority of a quorum of a public board cannot meet in secret. There are ten BOE members, and Kline met with six total — that’s a majority. Did he violate the law? Kline says no, he only met with three at a time. But, in a 1998 opinion, the Kansas attorney general’s office said a series of private meetings on the same topic that together add up to a majority of the board is a violation of the act. If that’s not what happened, what is it? And if that’s splitting hairs, did Kline clearly, intentionally and brazenly skirt the intent of the law? You bet he did.

Now Kline wants records from abortion clinics in the guise of investigating child rape. Gee, seems that statistics would indicate that most of the girls carried their pregnancies to term and delivered in hospitals. But Kline’s not looking there; his true agenda is obvious. And again, he flouts the law by ignoring the right to privacy of medical records guaranteed by the HIPAA statutes.

Is this the kind of respect for the law Kline is sworn to uphold and protect and that the residents of Kansas should expect from their chief protector of the law? Emphatically no.

Doug Burger,

Lawrence