Hodge resigns committee over abortion issue: Siegfreid shows his loyalty to democrat AG Morrison over his own Republican House Pro-life Legislators

Hodge resigns committee over abortion issue
By Arley Hoskin/The Olathe News

Rep. Ben Hodge resigned Tuesday from the House Federal and State Affairs Committee during the legislators’ last day in Topeka.
Hodge, an Overland Park Republican, said that House leadership ignored abortion violations, and that he resigned to protest a corrupt system.
“We were not elected to ignore violations of the law, and that’s what is going on,” Hodge said.
Hodge said he wants to see George Tiller, a Wichita doctor who was accused by former Attorney General Phill Kline of performing illegal late-term abortions, charged for violating state law.
Late-te rm ab o rtions are legal in Kansas only when bringing the pregnancy to term could permanently impair a woman’s bodily function.
Kline filed 30 charges against Tiller in December. A Wichita judge dismissed the charges because Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston said Kline did not seek permission to file the charges in her jurisdiction.
Attorney General Paul Morrison has the medical records Kline retrieved from Tiller’s office and says he is investigating Tiller. He has not filed any charges against Tiller.
Hodge said he thinks the Legislature should look into the matter.
“Our judicial system is covering up crimes,” Hodge said. “Our attorney general is ignoring crimes, and I think it is our job to expose crimes.”
According the Associated Press, doctors in Kansas have performed 2,600 abortions on viable fetuses since the late-term abortion law took effect in 1998.
Doctors are required to report that they performed a late-term abortion for a medical reas o n, b ut they don’t have to cite what that reason was. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed a bill Monday that would require doctors to specify medical reasons for late-term abortions.
“My feeling is that she is just supporting the abortion industry that she is going to rely heavily on when she runs for U.S. Senate in 2010,” Hodge said.
Hodge said the Legislature should be able to look at records from Tiller’s clinic to see if Tiller has broken the law.
“We don’t want the names; we just need to know where the crimes have been committed,” he said.
Committee members asked Speaker of the House Melvin Neufeld, an Ingalls Republican, to grant the committee subpoena power to investigate the Tiller issue.
“It is within the speaker’s full authority to grant our committee subpoena power,” Hodge said.
Neufeld was not available for comment Tuesday.
Committee Chair Arlen Siegfreid, an Olathe Republican, said that the committee discussed early in the session whether they should pu rs ue an i nvestigation of Tiller, but that House leadership decided to leave the matter in Morrison’s hands.
Siegfried said he supports the Neufeld’s decision.
“Apparently Ben objected to that, and I’m just not sure what he accomplished by resigning,” Siegfreid said.
In the five years that Siegfreid has been in office, he said he never has seen a legislator resign from a committee.
“We’ve had people resign from the Legislature for personal reasons but not from committee that I’m aware of,” Siegfreid said.