Tiller Charges Substantive, Not "Technical"
PRESS ANALYSIS
March 16, 2009
Contact: Kathy Ostrowski 785-250-4502
Remarks attributable to: Kathy Ostrowski, State Legislative Director, Kansans for Life
In the decades following the 1973 Roe v Wade decision, numerous rulings by the United States Supreme Court carved out a strong role for states in regulating abortion. Kansas responded by adopting better informed consent provisions in 1997, and in 1998 by banning abortions of viable fetuses past 21 weeks gestation.
State legislators clearly intended that nearly all late-term Kansas abortions would end, as the ensuing uproar demonstrated when, within the year, two high-profile teen victims of incest (one from Arizona, one from Michigan) obtained illegal late abortions at George Tiller’s Wichita’s facility. Public outrage fomented when the Attorney General, Governor, and state Healing Arts Board all played “pass the buck” and refused to enforce the law.
Today, Tiller is headed to trial for 19 counts of illegal abortions performed in 2003 without verification by an independent physician that the woman’s health would be ‘substantially and irreversibly damaged.’ The abortions being prosecuted were all done on unborn children old enough to have a good shot at living, and none were performed to save the mother’s life.
Any characterization of the upcoming criminal trial as dealing with “technical” violations of the late-term ban is grossly in error. Lawmakers constructed oversight of late-term abortions to include “substantive” requirements, including:
1) objective fetal assessments;
2) reporting of legitimate diagnoses to the state health statistic department; and
3) validation by a second physician unwilling to jeopardize his/her Kansas license.
None of the three requirements can be dismissed as “technicalities” as they are each significant elements insuring the public is protected and the healing arts are not prostituted.
Enter the person of Ann Kristin Neuhaus, a Kansas-licensed physician with a history of failed abortion clinics and a documented inability to practice medicine properly. Even after the state Healing Arts Board ordered remedial training for her, and appointed “babysitters” to oversee her practice, they twice branded her a danger to the public. Were she in any medical specialty other than abortion, the board would have removed her license.
Instead, Neuhaus kept her license after claiming political persecution, and went “underground.” On her 2003 medical license renewal form, in the space where thousands of Kansas physicians routinely list a geographical address for their medical office, Neuhaus uniquely wrote, “None--make only consultation 'calls' to another office with which I am not affiliated--I have no practice location now (my office is at home but no patient consults there)."
This is an intriguing and long-winded explanation--citing rather obscure Kansas statutory language about prohibited abortion affiliation--instead of giving a simple address for her medical office. In subsequent annual license renewals, Neuhaus listed a post-office box as a medical office address!
Neuhaus has no private medical practice and no ability even to write prescriptions for most drugs, due to past discipline by the federal drug authority. No matter how tarnished was her reputation, however, she retained the prized necessity for collaboration with Tiller—a valid Kansas medical license.
Did she have the willingness to lie about the psychological condition of pregnant clients of Tiller in order to retain her position as the sole “reviewer” for his late-term abortions in 2003? That is what evidence from former Attorney General Phill Kline was expected to prove, had his December 2006 criminal charges against Tiller not been dismissed by Sedgwick District Attorney Nola Foulston, recent Attorney General Paul Morrison and the Kansas Supreme Court.
But what this trial is about--under new Attorney General Stephen Six and as prosecuted by Barry Disney--is no small thing. It is at the heart of the medical scam that Kansas lawmakers in 1998 thought they would prevent—the collusion of two abortionists, in secret, to secure lucrative late-term abortion fees.
We would expect prosecutor Disney to provide these facts as evidence, which we believe are already available in the public domain:
1) …that Tiller repeatedly had need for a doctor to “rubberstamp” the many patients who traveled to Kansas, without doctor referral, encouraged by the absence of warnings describing the very narrow situations under which late-term abortions could be obtained. Indeed, Tiller’s 2001 self-promotional video cites age, employment troubles, homelessness, and domestic situations all as valid reasons for abortion! A 2005 L.A.Times article revealed women who admitted their Tiller late-term abortions were performed for Down syndrome and other non-lethal conditions. What kind of physician would legitimize such blatantly illegal justifications except a financially desperate doctor?
2) …that numerous financial documents attest to money paid to Neuhaus for late-term abortion consultations, indicating a statutorily-prohibited affiliation in that she would never have had access to these clients without Tiller. Moreover, that she used his car, and traveled to his building in another city, at his request, on specified days necessary to allow abortions to quickly ensue. The financial pattern of collusion can be traced to years following 2003.
3) …that the 1998 law’s lack of precise definitions of legal and financial affiliation should not hinder prosecution of de facto collusion when the legislative meaning is obvious. Those who commit medical fraud should not be able to escape prosecution because lawmakers may have relied on the common understanding of the plainly understood concepts of affiliation. The apparent Tiller/ Neuhaus collusion is exactly what lawmakers wanted to prevent.
Kansans for Life hopes that the state puts on an aggressive and thorough presentation of evidence showing that in 2003, a substantive element of providing legal late-term abortions was intentionally and repeatedly violated. We further hope that this case is not “thrown” such that the Attorney General denies the imperative to further investigate and prosecute similar collusion by Tiller and Neuhaus after 2003.
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A compilation of Kansans Abortion Statistics from 1998 (when Kansas late-term law passed) through 2007 shows 2,600+ abortions of viable unborn children took place during that time, despite a Kansas ban on the procedure that allows only narrow exceptions that must be approved by another doctor, not affiliated with the abortionist.
Feb. 25, 2009 KFL Press Release with excerpts of Judge Clark Owens ruling against Tiller's Motion to Dismiss and order for Tiller to go to trial.
