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TOPEKA, August 19, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline filed a lawsuit Thursday against Governor Kathleen Sebelius in an attempt to make state funding of abortion illegal.

The suit argues that using state funds to finance abortion violates the state Constitution because of the protection for “inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Kline, according to a report in the Lawrence Journal-World, also requested that the court agree that life begins at conception, when “a new, unique and genetically distinct human being is formed, distinct from its host while dependent upon her.”

Currently, Medicaid pays for abortions that result from rape, incest, or when the pregnancy poses a threat to the life of the mother.

A spokesman for Kline said he was simply carrying out a mandate voted on by the state legislature in 2002, when the House voted 70-50 to ask the courts whether state funding for abortion is legal according to the Constitution. “We did what we were compelled by the Legislature to do,” said Kline’s spokesman, Whitney Watson.

The suit was filed in court on Kline’s behalf by a fellow pro-lifer, state Rep. Lance Kinzer (R-Olathe), who Kline appointed as special counsel. Kinzer said that in order for the court to decide the matter, “there has to be a determination that the unborn baby qualifies as a person in Kansas’ Bill of Rights.”

“There is no legal defense for the state of Kansas to spend one cent on elective abortion,” said Kansas Right to Life president Elmer Feldkamp. “Such expenditures must be stopped. We heartily support the Attorney General’s efforts to see to it that all human beings, born and preborn, are protected from the criminal act of abortion subsidized by the taxpayers of our great state,” he added.

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