(AP) – Kansas legislators who oppose abortion are divided over whether the attorney general’s office should investigate the state health department’s shredding of documents later sought as evidence in a criminal case against a Planned Parenthood clinic.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lance Kinzer, an Olathe Republican, said he wants to see the response from the health department, which is under different leaders than when the records were destroyed in 2005. House Speaker Mike O’Neal, a Hutchinson Republican, and Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, a Shawnee Republican, said they need more information about what happened.

But House Majority Leader Arlen Siegfreid, an Olathe Republican, and Rep. Steve Brunk, a Bel Aire Republican, said the attorney general’s office needs to investigate the shredding, which could hamper the criminal case filed in Johnson County in 2007 against Planned Parenthood’s clinic in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park. Brunk is chairman of the House Federal and State Affairs Committee, which reviews abortion legislation.

Attorney General Derek Schmidt’s office won’t comment about the shredding, and officials in Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration won’t say whether an internal investigation is under way.

Planned Parenthood attorneys have described the shredding as a routine, mandated under state regulations that set schedules for when old papers are destroyed. But abortion opponents are suspicious because the shredding was done by the administration of former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, an abortion rights Democrat who left office to become U.S. health and human services secretary.

The criminal case was filed by former prosecutor Phill Kline, a Republican abortion opponent, and it’s been described by anti-abortion groups as the first criminal case in the nation against a Planned Parenthood clinic. Kline was investigating the clinic in 2005, and the 107 charges he eventually filed included allegations that the clinic created false copies of the records shredded by the health department, which were 23 reports on individual abortions filed with KDHE in 2003.

A preliminary hearing to determine whether the case goes to trial had been scheduled for last month, but the Johnson County district attorney’s office persuaded a judge to delay it because of the document shredding. A hearing is scheduled Nov. 9 to assess the district attorney’s progress in identifying potential witnesses and alternative evidence.

“This smells like some very selective shredding,” Brunk said. “There needs to be an investigation, and it should come out of the attorney general’s office.”

But Kinzer said he’s confident that the health department, now under Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican abortion opponent who took office in January, will examine the circumstances thoroughly.

“It does raise definitely troubling questions,” Kinzer said. “I just want to make sure I’ve got more information before accusing anybody of anything.”

Schmidt, a Republican who took office in January, supported new restrictions on abortion as a state senator but wasn’t seen as an anti-abortion leader. His office said he won’t comment because of the ongoing criminal case.

The health department declined a request from The Associated Press for a copy of a memo that the agency sent to the Johnson County district attorney’s office about the shredding.