Planned Parenthood hopes to keep its records from Justice Dept.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri said it will do everything in its power to refuse a subpoena by the Justice Department for more than 100 medical records.

The department recently filed a motion seeking to force Planned Parenthood Federation of America to produce the records at a trial set for U.S. District Court in San Francisco on March 29.

The Justice Department said the files are essential to defend last year's Partial-Birth Abortion Act against lawsuits brought by Planned Parenthood and doctor groups around the country.

Planned Parenthood contends that the law is unconstitutional because it is too broad and lacks an exception for a woman's health.

Planned Parenthood, which has 12 centers in Missouri and Kansas, said providing the documents will be burdensome and a threat to its patients' privacy.

"We are going to do everything we can within the law to not turn over these records," Peter Brownlie, president of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri said. "It would be a dangerous precedent for the attorney general to be able to rummage through abortion records. These are private medical records of women that have nothing to do with this lawsuit, in our opinion."

In all, several hundred records are being sought from Planned Parenthood affiliates that serve six areas -- western Pennsylvania; San Diego; Los Angeles; New York City; Washington D.C. and Kansas/Mid-Missouri.

The Justice Department has asked for medical records of patients in those cities who have received abortions from 20 weeks through the end of the second trimester, Brownlie said.

The Planned Parenthood regional office in Overland Park, Kan., is the group's only facility in Missouri and Kansas that does abortions in the second trimester, he said.

The Justice Department is focusing on those cities to produce a geographic sample and because many of Planned Parenthood's expert witnesses in the case work at those sites. Brownlie said none that he knew of work in Kansas or Missouri.

Monica Goodling, spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said Friday the subpoena makes room for editing personal information from a patient's file, and the department was not interested in obtaining personal information for its case.

The department also subpoenaed similar records from hospitals where doctors challenging the law did the procedure. The department is meeting resistance over privacy concerns with hospitals as well.

Brownlie said providing the documents will not only threaten patients' privacy, but would also be burdensome for his staff. He estimated it will take up to 1 1/2 hours to remove personal information from each of more than 100 records from the past year. Some files "easily reach 20 pages" in length, he said.

"It will take the staff away from what we are here to do," Brownlie said.

Planned Parenthood's suit challenges the law that prohibits a procedure referred to by critics as partial-birth abortion. Medical organizations call it "intact dilation and extraction." During the procedure, a fetus' legs and torso are pulled from the uterus before its skull is punctured.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America, founded in 1916 and based in New York, runs 900 health centers in 49 states and serves about 5 million people each year.