Topeka ? At least a few abortion rights advocates have had the novel “Moby-Dick” on their minds during the past two weeks as they have watched Attorney General Phill Kline attempt to harpoon Dr. George Tiller before he leaves office Monday.

Kline alleges that Tiller, who operates a Wichita clinic, performed 15 illegal late-term abortions in 2003 on patients aged 10 to 22 and failed to properly report the details to state health officials. Tiller’s attorneys contend the charges are groundless.

The attorney general – a Republican and strong abortion opponent – can’t get his criminal case into court, blocked by the district attorney and a judge in Sedgwick County over a jurisdiction issue. He appointed a special prosecutor, but his appointee’s job will disappear after Attorney General-elect Paul Morrison, an abortion rights Democrats, takes over next week.

Kline is likely to end his tenure as attorney general with little to show for a 3 1/2-year pursuit of Tiller. His career in politics has been damaged by the perception, which Morrison helped foster in unseating Kline, that Kline focused much of his professional energy trying to bring down a nationally known abortion provider.

And that has abortion rights supporters recalling Herman Melville’s classic novel about Captain Ahab and his pursuit of a great white whale.

“It really is his Ahab-like obsession with Dr. Tiller and his idea that obsession will somehow advance his political career,” said Dan Monnat, a Wichita attorney representing Tiller.

Tiller’s politics

Kline contends he’s simply trying to enforce Kansas law, which is supposed to restrict abortions after the 22nd week of pregnancy and once a fetus can survive outside of the womb. Fellow abortion opponents find Tiller’s activities morally offensive, especially because he’s among a few doctors in the nation performing late-term abortions.

Tiller’s clinic has been the site of large protests. It was bombed in 1985, and a protester shot Tiller in both arms in 1993.

Kline and abortion opponents make much of Tiller’s political activities. He helped finance $248,000 worth of anti-Kline advertising alone in 2002 and 2006, through the ProKanDo political action committee, now a big force in Kansas politics. The PAC, of course, gained prominence after Kline began his first run for statewide office at the end of 2001.

“Kline has suffered greatly, personally and politically, because of this,” said Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group. “It does make you wonder if justice can be done.”

The outgoing attorney general waged a two-year legal battle to obtain the records of 90 patients from Tiller’s clinic and a Planned Parenthood clinic in Overland Park. He obtained edited versions from a Shawnee County judge on Oct. 24, and they provided key evidence for his charges against Tiller.

Kline’s special prosecutor, Wichita attorney Don McKinney, said Kansans expect the law to protect “babies that are about to be born.”

“Those laws restrict the abortion of late-term babies to very specific medical circumstances,” he said. “Those laws need to be enforced and not winked at.”

A matter of trust?

Kline filed 30 misdemeanor criminal charges against Tiller on Dec. 21 in Sedgwick County District Court. The next day, District Judge Paul W. Clark dismissed them after District Attorney Nola Foulston said Kline didn’t have the authority to file them.

Foulston, a Democrat, said Kansas law required Kline to obtain her consent before filing charges – and he didn’t. Kline asked the judge to reconsider, but last week Clark refused to reinstate the charges.

If McKinney tried to pursue the case, the result likely would be the same, given this declaration from Foulston: “There is no and will be no special prosecutor in this community.”

Foulston said she had asked Kline for his evidence so she could decide whether to pursue prosecution. Since the election, Morrison and his aides have said repeatedly that he would evaluate the evidence before deciding whether to move forward.

But abortion opponents trust neither of them, and Kline apparently doesn’t either. After all, he could have turned his evidence over to Foulston first and let her make the decision on whether to file charges, but then he couldn’t guarantee a case would be filed.

Kline is determined to see Tiller prosecuted. He told reporters after being rebuffed last week in court that he would continue until “justice is served.”

And his determination is what leads some to recall “Moby-Dick.”

Consider some of Ahab’s words just before he spears the behemoth he has been hunting obsessively, only to have the line from his harpoon gun wrap around his neck so that he’s pulled under by the whale, along with his ship and all but one of its crew.

Ahab says: “Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

It has a familiar ring in Kansas these days.