Clinics Want To Know How Bill O’Reilly Got Confidential Patient Records

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.


Two clinics in Topeka, Kansas have asked the Kansas Supreme Court to investigate Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline and Fox Broadcasting’s Bill O’Reilly over O’Reilly’s claim that he possessed information from the records of patients who underwent abortion procedures.

Kline, a vocal opponent of abortion, took possession of ninety medical records from the two clinics earlier this year “as part of his investigation into alleged cases of child rape, failure to report child rape and violations of state’s late-term abortion statue.” According to Kline’s website:

Those medical records are being reviewed by criminal prosecutors and investigators in my office. I want to remind Kansans that women and children are not and never will be under investigation – only abortion doctors, confirming doctors, and rapists are under investigation. Also, I have never sought the women’s identities. I do not need their identities. Their privacy is protected by a protocol my office established with the district court judge to removing the identifying information of the women from the very beginning.

O’Reilly maintains that an “inside source” gave him the information from the Topeka records. He cited the case of a doctor who performed late-term abortions “because patients were depressed,” and referred to the procedure as “executing babies.”

Last week, Kansas’s former attorney general, Bob Stephan, asked the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission to investigate Kline’s fundraising activities.

They want to control the story. Our readers don’t let them.

Powerful forces are working to control the narrative, rewrite history, and keep you in the dark. That’s why the Mother Jones newsroom is fiercely independent, not backed by billionaires or bending to political whims.

But we can’t do this work without you.

Our nonprofit newsroom is funded by our readers. Each donation helps strengthen our work, so we can continue to investigate and publish, no matter what an authoritarian-minded administration wants the media to say.

Stand with us. Make a gift today.

They want to control the story. Our readers don’t let them.

Powerful forces are working to control the narrative, rewrite history, and keep you in the dark. That’s why the Mother Jones newsroom is fiercely independent, not backed by billionaires or bending to political whims.

But we can’t do this work without you.

Our nonprofit newsroom is funded by our readers. Each donation helps strengthen our work, so we can continue to investigate and publish, no matter what an authoritarian-minded administration wants the media to say.

Stand with us. Make a gift today.

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate