Time is working against Phill Kline as the Republican and passionately anti-abortion attorney general seeks to vindicate himself for activities that helped prompt Kansas voters to boot him from statewide office.

Kline long has been pursuing abortion clinics operated in Wichita by Dr. George Tiller and in Overland Park by Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. As he has been trying to build criminal cases against them, they have resisted and tried to slow or block his efforts.

He and the clinics battled in court for more than two years over the records of 90 patients. While Kline obtained edited versions of those records in October, two weeks before the Nov. 7 general election, his pursuit of the documents was a key factor in his loss to Democrat Paul Morrison, as many voters appeared to agree with Morrison that it represented an invasion of patients’ privacy.

Filing a post-election case against Tiller, based on evidence from those records, became an opportunity for Kline to tell Kansans he was right to pursue them.

On Jan. 8, when he leaves office, he will become Johnson County district attorney, giving him time to pursue Planned Parenthood. But he has only eight working days to get a criminal case against Tiller going.

He has tried, filing 30 misdemeanor criminal charges last week in Sedgwick County District Court against the doctor, only to see them dismissed by a judge in less than a day for a jurisdictional issue. It was an unexpected and significant setback.

Kline contends Tiller improperly used patients’ mental health concerns as justification for performing late-term procedures when state law prevented it. He also accuses Tiller of failing to report the details of his activities properly.

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline is surrounded by media during a news conference. A Sedgwick County judge dismissed 30 misdemeanor criminal charges against Wichita abortion provider George Tiller on Friday, less than a day after Kline filed them.

Ultimate vindication for Kline would be a successful criminal prosecution of Tiller. But Kline’s loss to Morrison means Kline almost certainly won’t finish a case before leaving office.

However, he could begin one, raise questions about Tiller’s activities, kick the anti-abortion propaganda apparatus into higher gear and create potential political problems for Morrison.

Ironically, Kline is not as pressed in dealing with Planned Parenthood because of Morrison’s victory on Nov. 7. Morrison was a Republican before switching parties to challenge Kline, leaving the GOP with the right to replace Morrison, through a vote of some 600 Johnson County precinct committee members. Abortion opponents helped Kline engineer a 25-vote victory, amid widespread expectations that he will go after Planned Parenthood.

“I have no doubt that he will try to come up with some type of criminal charges, whether they are supportable or not,” said Peter Brownlie, chief executive officer for Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri.