The women and teen-age girls whose medical records are the subject of a once-secret inquisition by Kansas Atty. Gen. Phill Kline have not been told their sexual histories may come under scrutiny.

That may soon change.

A spokesman for Planned Parenthood said if the Kansas Supreme Court gives Kline’s office access to the files, the organization will notify the women and help them find attorneys to protect their privacy rights.

“If the court decides to go forward, we will make every effort to contact every one of the women to make sure they have the opportunity to assert their rights to privacy,” said Peter Brownlie, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri.

“Some of them, I’m sure, will want to stand up and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. That’s my information and I want to have a say in this,'” Brownlie said.

Kline’s office has argued it needs to see the files as part of an investigation into allegations of child rape, illegal late-term abortions and failure by clinics to report instances of child abuse.

Planned Parenthood and Women’s Health Care Services, a Wichita abortion clinic run by Dr. George Tiller, challenged Kline’s access to the 90 files.

The Kansas Supreme Court heard arguments in the case last week. The court did not indicate when it would rule.

Brownlie said Planned Parenthood has held off notifying the women whose files are being sought because it remains “hopeful the subpoenas will be blocked or significantly narrowed. We do not want to cause undue alarm or anxiety.”

Of the 90 files requested by Kline, Brownlie said 29 involve Planned Parenthood patients; the remainder are thought to involve Women’s Health Care Services patients.

On several occasions, Kline has vowed to protect the women’s identities.

“The attorney general has made it very clear that he does not need to know the identities of the women – he does, obviously, need the identities of the children,” who’ve had abortions, said Kline spokesman Whitney Watson.

In Kansas, the legal age of consent for sex is 16. If one partner is older than that and the other younger, then the older partner can be prosecuted for statutory rape.

But the state’s so-called Romeo and Juliet law recognizes as a lesser crime sex between youthful partners providing both are 18 or under and the age of the younger partner is within four years of the older partner.

Sex with boys or girls younger than 14 is illegal.

Some of the abortion records sought by Kline are thought to involve girls younger than 14. State Department of Health and Environment statistics show that 30 girls under age 14 had abortions in Kansas last year; 19 of the 30 were from out of state.

Kline has said he suspects many of these girls were victims of child rapists.

Watson defended the girls and women not knowing their files were the subject of the inquisition, noting that the daughter of convicted BTK serial killer Dennis Rader was unaware that her DNA to been used to arrest her father.

“It’s not uncommon that a piece or pieces of evidence are evaluated by law enforcement officials without the individual’s knowledge,” Watson said.

It’s logical to assume that if Rader’s daughter had known about the investigation, she would have shared the information with her father, causing him to “flee or take other drastic actions.”

If underage girls realized authorities were looking at their medical files, Watson said, some might correspondingly help their rapists flee.

Lee Thompson, a Wichita attorney representing Women’s Health Care Services, declined comment on whether his client would notify those affected by the court’s pending decision.

“How that’s handled will be treated as confidential,” Thompson said. “But, clearly, patients have rights.”