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By JOHN HANNA
AP Political Writer

TOPEKA -- With anti-abortion groups frustrated by his victory, Attorney General-elect Paul Morrison said Wednesday he won't automatically drop a review of abortion records, though he's not opposed to having a ''neutral'' party intervene.

Morrison, a Democrat after switching parties last year to take on Republican incumbent Phill Kline, had 58 percent of the vote in final, unofficial election results. Kline received 42 percent.

A key issue in the race was Kline's pursuit of 90 records from clinics operated in Wichita by Dr. George Tiller and in Overland Park by Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. A district judge turned edited versions over to Kline on Oct. 24, and he has said investigators are reviewing them for evidence of potential crimes that include rape, incest and illegal late-term abortions.

Morrison, the Johnson County district attorney, accused Kline of abusing his office, invading patients' privacy and pursuing a personal political agenda. After Fox television's Bill O'Reilly said he had information from Kansas abortion records, the clinics asked the Kansas Supreme Court to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate and take possession of the records.

Kline said repeatedly during his campaign that Morrison planned to drop any investigation of potential wrongdoing by the clinics. Kline and other abortion opponents even suggested Tiller and abortion activists were trying to ''buy'' the election for Morrison by financing attacks on Kline.

''There's been a lot of questions about what I'm going to do with the medical records,'' Morrison said Wednesday during a Statehouse news conference. ''That is an open case, and I have an obligation to look at all open cases up there, which we will do and will do that quickly.''

He added: ''We will give that the attention that it deserves, and that's all I can say right now.''

Kline spokeswoman Sherriene Jones said Morrison left the impression -- and let others circulate it -- that he would drop the review.

As for his latest comments, she said, ''It would be a pleasant surprise to see that he followed through with that.''

Morrison said he would act ''with an eye, obviously, on how important it is to protect people's privacy.'' He also reached out to anti-abortion activists.

''I think that what people will see in me is a very evenhanded approach to enforcing the law in this state,'' he said.

But the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue called the election ''Bloody Tuesday,'' partly because of Kline's loss. It issued a statement Wednesday headlined, ''Morrison slithers into KS AG's office on backs of dead babies.''

Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, the state's largest anti-abortion group, said she would like to think Morrison would be evenhanded but believes he's been ''compromised'' by Tiller's efforts on his behalf.

''I think we have an attorney general who's going to be completely vindicated on this point,'' Culp said of Kline. ''What he did is right. People don't quite realize it yet, but they will. I'm fully confident that they will.''

The two clinics argued in documents filed Monday with the Supreme Court that Kline couldn't be trusted to conduct an objective review or keep the records from becoming public. They said O'Reilly's comments showed the records weren't secure, though the Fox television host never said his information came from the records Kline obtained.

Kline also has noted that the records were redacted so that individual patients wouldn't be identified.

But Pedro Irigonegaray, a Topeka attorney representing the clinics, said they are not dropping their request, noting that Morrison doesn't take office until Jan. 8.

''Mr. Kline still represents a significant threat to the privacy rights of medical patients,'' Irigonegaray said. ''If there was only a comma left on those medical records, that comma still belongs to those patients.''

Jones said there's no authority for the Supreme Court to appoint a special prosecutor, given that the abortion records dispute technically remains in Shawnee County District Court. Kline obtained the records from a judge there.

Morrison also expressed doubts about the clinics' request. The Supreme Court hasn't acted.

''I'm not sure the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to do that,'' he said. ''It's kind of a novel issue.''

But he added: ''It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to have a party that is, everybody agrees, neutral, perhaps appointed by the court.''

But Culp said the ''neutral'' party should be appointed after Morrison takes office, to ensure that potential crimes aren't ignored.

''For right now, we've got an attorney general for two more months, who's capable, who knows this issue well,'' she said.