Charges against Kan. abortion doc dumped

Dec. 22, 2006, 1:46PM
Charges against Kan. abortion doc dumped

By ROXANA HEGEMAN Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

WICHITA, Kan. — Kansas' attorney general, a vocal abortion opponent, charged a well-known abortion provider with illegally performing late-term abortions, but a Sedgwick County judge on Friday threw out the charges after less than a day.

Judge Paul W. Clark dismissed the charges against Tiller after Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston said her office had not been consulted by Kline. Clark signed his one-page order only hours after Kline's complaint against Tiller was unsealed.

Attorney General Phill Kline's office did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Kline lost his re-election bid in November and leaves office in three weeks.

Most of the 30 misdemeanor counts Kline filed against Dr. George Tiller involve abortions performed on patients 17 or younger, including a 10-year-old, according to the criminal complaint unsealed Friday in Sedgwick County District Court.

Tiller's clinic, known for being one of the few in the country to perform late-term abortions, has been a high-profile target of anti-abortion protesters for decades. The clinic was bombed in 1985, and Tiller was shot in both arms by a protester in 1993.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4421307.html

Just when you think ol' Double-L can't embarass himself more, he surprises you.

And just WAIT until he tries a case as Johnson County DA.

to PhilL Kline is an idiot forum because of all the recent news about him.

:rofl:

I'm glad the judge has some sense.

The AG can't bring indictments or complaints against local cases anyway. That's why each county has a D.A.

:banghead:

In 1989 or 1990 (or both). I seem to remember Paul Clark being mentioned as a judge that had to deal with Randall Terry and his ilk, and he made a statement that said that arrests would continue, and if the OR people felt they needed to carry on as they had been, then he hoped, "they brought their toothbrushes."

TlalocW

Kansas: Phill Kline's election as Johnson County DA "insults" democracy & voters
By Diane Silver

Are people angry in Johnson County about deposed Attorney General Phill Kline's election to be their district attorney? Oh yeah.

Boo Tyson, executive director of the the Johnson County MAINstream Coalition, explains how her organization feels about Kline being put into office by the votes of 316 ultra-conservative GOP activists.

In a statement, released Wednesday afternoon, Tyson notes:

The MAINstream Coalition is disappointed in and shocked by the vote of the Johnson County Republican Party precinct committee leaders to elect Phill Kline as the new County District Attorney. This decision ignored the will of the moderate voters of Johnson County, who sent an overwhelming message to Kline on November 7th. It is just one more example of the radical right's willingness to ignore the perspectives of anyone who disagrees with them, even if they are members of their own party. As we have seen on a national level, this kind of "stay the course" thinking is both short-sighted and disrespectful.

Mr. Kline was also never officially announced as a candidate prior to this election. While there were rumors of his candidacy, the lack of a formal announcement is yet another reflection of an obvious lack of regard for the electoral process. One of the reasons the MAINstream Coalition was founded was to oppose "stealth candidates" who attempt to fool the electorate. In this case, Mr. Kline apparently wanted to fool his own party members.

The MAINstream Coalition welcomes voters-and potential voters-of any political party or affiliation to join us in our nonpartisan, moderate approach to stand against the "blinders on" approach used so often by the Far Right. We continue to work to protect and defend religious liberty and public education-fighting for democracy and freedom. While this vote may have been legal, it does nothing to promote democracy or honor voters. In fact, it insults both.

A nonpartisan, grassroots organization, the coalition reports that it was founded in Johnson County in 1993 to fight extremist attempts to undermine Constitutional freedoms and the separation of church and state.

Hope and Politics

Oh, well...perhaps he'll do less damage here than if he had all of Kansas.

A late-term abortion can be needed because the pregnancy is literally killing the mother.

Phil Kline and the South Dakota Clotheshanger Coalition wanted to even ban those.
Rich women simply take a trip out of state, while poor women die.

My cousin's first grand-daughter died yesterday morning, barely three weeks old. At "birth" on Nov. 30, she was only 12 inches long and weighed only 1 pound, 6 ounces.

The week before Thanksgiving, my cousin's five-and-a-half-months-pregnant daughter-in-law was hospitalized with a condition called HELLP syndrome. I don't know that much about it, but I think you can look it up on the internets. It's an extreme form of toxemia or pre-eclampsia. Her blood pressure was skyrocketing to imminent stroke level, her liver and kidneys were starting to fail, she had pneumonia. At 25 weeks, her fetus didn't have much chance of survival outside the uterus, so the mother was put in the hospital with hopes she could carry another three or four weeks and bring the baby girl closer to term.

But the mother's condition began to deteriorate the week after Thanksgiving to the point where the baby's health was being compromised, too, partly by the massive doses of medication being given to the mother. The baby was delivered via c-section. Though she appeared to be doing well at first, she contracted an infection and was simply too small to fight it off. Her heart gave out yesterday morning.

My cousin, who is a right-wing "christian" freak-o asshole, has disowned his son and condemned him for consenting to this "late-term abortion," even though the mother would have died had the pregnancy not been terminated.

Yes, the pregnancy "terminated" in a live birth, but one which everyone knew was extremely high risk. The doctors only gave a 1-in-10 chance of her surviving, and warned everyone that she would almost certainly have complications all her life, possibly serious ones, not only from the premature birth but also from the stress put upon her by the mother's ill-health and the medications given to treat it.

What would you have done in a case like this, knowing that the delivery was tantamount to an abortion? Would you have terminated this pregnancy, even at 26 weeks and potential viability of the fetus, or let both -- BOTH -- mother and child die? What if it had been determined that viability had been compromised already and it was known that the fetus had no chance outside the womb? In most cases where the fetus is essentially healthy and has some hope of survival, deliveries like this are done, but if the fetus isn't viable, what then?

So many people who are on the side of "abortion is okay in the first trimester but late term abortion is just not right" often seem to think abortion -- any abortion -- is a matter of frivolous choice and easy convenience. Maybe for some few it is. But if you think this decision, for this young woman and her husband, was an easy choice, a frivolous decision based on laziness or irresponsibility, please, please, think again.

I doubt that my bible-thumping piece of shit cousin will think again. He's already alienated his youngest daughter over another issue and now he's disowned his son. So much for his vaunted "christianity."

Happy holidays, all.


Tansy Gold
(edited for stupid typos committed in a state of emotional stress)

Though I'm very sorry for the loss and grief your family is suffering right now. I have to add one thing:

So many people who are on the side of "abortion is okay in the first trimester but late term abortion is just not right" often seem to think abortion -- any abortion -- is a matter of frivolous choice and easy convenience. Maybe for some few it is.

Only people -- and institutions -- who harbor a deep and abiding hatred (and fear!) of women think that. Women -- frivolous, flighty, hysterical. Can't be trusted to make their own decisions. Can't be trusted to make decisions about their lives (then how can they be trusted to raise children they don't want???). Women: despised and feared.

And let's think about it for a minute. The underlhing premise of such attitudes is that the decision to get an abortion must be weighty and serious, and preferrably, must make the woman who is contemplating abortion actually SUFFER. The decision can't be just a decision, morally neutral and without external baggage. (THAT might make women get even more abortions, I'm sure the thinking goes. We have to make women as miserable as possible so we can mould their behavior in the right direction.)

But if there's no "sin" in abortion -- and I believe there's not, why should the woman have to suffer over her decision? Many do, of course, but why is it REQUIRED by those who oppose abortion, and the suffering condoned by those who defend the right to abortion?

Only because women should suffer either in childbirth or in the avoiding of it, that's all. Women should suffer whenever it can be arranged, that's all. Women deserve to suffer. After all, they had sex. And pregnancy (and suffering) is the price to be paid for that.


Oh, one more thing: there is no such thing as late term abortion where the fetus is healthy and viable. It just doesn't happen. Period. Further, the pregnancy almost always (probably 99-100%) seriously and negatively is affecting the health and life of the mother. NOW everyone go think about this: the utter and total misogyny of a group of mostly men (Congress) who would propose let alone pass legislation banning Late Term Abortion EVEN WHERE THE MOTHER'S LIFE IS AT STAKE: DEATH, the ultimate punishment for her sexuality and sexual behavior.

of "choice," my answer is always --

It is the woman's RIGHT to make that choice to terminate, for whatever reason, at whatever point in the pregnancy. No exceptions, no qualifications, no restrictions. Period. End of discussion.

And inevitably I encounter someone -- whether here on DU or elsewhere, there's always someone -- who says something along the lines of, "Do you mean, if a woman was eight and three quarters months pregnant and decided she just didn't want to go through with it, you'd say it was okay for her to abort? That's barbaric!"

My response is always, "Yes, you may think it is, and you're allowed to think that, but you aren't that woman. You don't know what's going through her head or her life. You don't know what is or isn't wrong with the baby. You don't know shit. You don't even know how many times such a scenario occurs, compared to the scenarios where women's lives are endangered by fetuses that have non-survivable birth defects or by complications of the pregnancy. A woman either has a RIGHT to terminate a pregnancy she no longer wants, regardless of why she doesn't want it any more, or she has no right at all. The right to abortion, in my opinion, is as fundamental to a woman's right to life as the right to breathe. No one else can live in her body, no one else can live in her heart and mind and soul; no one else should have the right to force her to do something with her body -- bear a child -- that she does not want to do."

Yes, I cringe at the thought of the woman who just says, "Oh, I'm tired of being pregnant; I want to get rid of it," but I also know it just doesn't happen that way, at least not very often. And for the few times that maybe it does happen, I'm absolutely and without guilt willing to put up with it and not blame the woman, because I know there are so many others who would be forced to sacrifice so much if abortion were outlawed or (further) restricted.

And I hope I didn't give the impression that I think women should not have any feelings about the decision to terminate a pregnancy. If for some it really is a decision that's kind of "Oh, shit, here we go again, but no big deal; I've lost count of how many I've had but it sure beats the alternatives," Well, okay, whatever floats your boat, honey. I think there are better alternatives for birth control, but that's me. I believe the option has to be there. And when it's just a matter of convenience, that, too, is okay with me. Better an abortion than a child brought into the world unwanted and unloved and uncared for. Far better.

For those women who terminate a pregnancy and never look back, hey, I'm okay with that. I don't think motherhood should be the be all and end all to a woman's existence. I'm glad they recognized and acknowledged their own needs and didn't sacrifice themselves for someone else's notion of what their happiness ought to be. And I sure as hell don't think this continuing patriarchal misogyny, which is at the foundation, is a very good thing for the future of the planet. But at the same time, I think we do have to retain some compassion for those women for whom the decision to abort is a heart-wrenching one, even if their resulting guilt is imposed by a patriarchal, misogynist culture that condemns a woman who isn't a mother or who voids a pregnancy.

(Back in the 1970s, a friend's mother committed suicide because she felt such unrelenting guilt over aborting a severely deformed Thalidomide baby back in the 1960s. All the logic over the fetus' inability to live anything even approaching normal life or even the effect it would have on the rest of the family ever made any difference to this woman. She was convinced she was a "murderer" and wasn't fit to live. So she took her own life and left her husband to raise their other three children. It was years before my friend was able to get over the idea that her mother loved "that dead baby" more than she loved the rest of the children. What a difference it would have made if it all had taken place in a culture where women's lives -- their physical health, their mental health, their freedom to be intellectual, creative, caring, working, loving beings -- are put ahead of the sacred notion of "woman is nothing but a bundle of sin that she can only expiate by being a mother, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over until it kills her."

BF and I have had the discussion about abortion and about the death penalty more times than I care to count. I'm a strong proponent of on-demand abortion, no questions asked, and an equally strong opponent of the death penalty, period, no exceptions.

But then again, I'm


Tansy Gold

With HELLP syndrome, both the woman's and the baby's health are usually severely compromised. In fact, extremely premature neonates (23-28 weeks) born due to HELLP often do not survive. Luckily, HELLP is very rare and I hope your cousin's DIL is recovering to better health. My heart goes out to them for their loss...

The "bible-thumping" cousin is an ignoramous (er, not that I have to tell you that!). An abortion is terminating a pregnancy without intent for the fetus to survive to a live birth. Clearly, that is not what happened in the DIL's case. They put forth a valiant effort to try to help their baby live by going with the medically necessary C-section, with the DIL even endangering her own life to give the baby more time to reach viability. They did the absolute best they could in their situation and should have no regrets. I probably would have done exactly what DIL and the son did here. In fact, I sort of did...

My pregnancy with my son ended in an emergency C-section at 24 weeks. We had only a few minutes to decide what to do and my OB felt that the only thing we could do if we wanted to try to help the baby live was a C-section due to incompetent cervix, bulging membranes, and a prolapsed umbilical cord. Had we not gone with the C-section, Colin definitely would have died and I might have too from hemorrhaging due to an abrupted placenta. At 1 lb. 4 ozs., he had a relatively uncomplicated NICU stay (a few ups and downs but neven any acute danger) and is now 11 yrs old, albeit with life long medical issues and disabilities. Due to complications from the C-section and pre-existing issues that caused the premature birth, we've elected to never attempt another pregnancy. It's just too risky for my health and I have a child here I need to care for... But if I did become pregnant again, I'd likely terminate early on to avoid those health risks to which I'm vulnerable...

No, my perspective is that there is *nothing* that is ever a matter of convenience in regards to pregnancy and childbearing.

to let the woman/child die?

If you were in late term pregancy and your doctors told you that you would die unless they extracted the fetus, would you continue w/the pregnancy and allow the baby to die or be motherless?

other than their sick and twisted agenda's. They know NOTHING about the procedure or why it's performed. In fact most of them know nothing about medicine or scieince at all.

The phrase "late term" seems to imply that Dr. Tiller aborts pregnancies that are into the third trimester or past 24-26 weeks, when most fetuses are medically viable (can live outside the womb). Most doctors and ethicists actually tend to refer to a second trimester abortion as a "later" abortion as it is performed later than the vast majority of abortions (almost 90% which are done in the first trimester), but is not in the "late term"/third trimseter when most fetuses are viable. The problem here is that Dr. Tiller performs *medically indicated* abortions only up to about 24-26 weeks, which is before the fetus is medically viable.

For a patient seeking a termination past 18 weeks at Dr. Tiller's clinic, they need a medical referal from their OB and a summary chart of their pre-natal testing showing why the abortion is necessary during the second trimester. Abortion procedures become more dangerous to the pregnant woman's health as the pregnancy advances and there are only a handful of OB's in the US who are skilled at certain safer abortion procedures performed between 16-26 weeks, especially if the pregnant woman has pre-existing medical problems that would complicate a second trimester abortion or labor induction. Second trimester abortions also have to be scheduled in advance. They take 2-3 days to perform, so the patient has to plan for accomodations and travel around this several day surgical period. A 20 week pregnant woman can't just walk into a clinic and have an abortion that day....

Post-viability abortions however are not legal in any of the 50 states because medical technology can help viable fetuses survive once born. But some fetuses with certain genetic conditions or severely compromised organ systems are not medically viable even past 24 weeks. And that is the legal criteria required to determine whether an abortions procedure is ethically and legally permissable - a balance between protecting the pregnant woman's health and determining if the pregnancy can result in a live birth. Luckily, pre-natal testing can be performed relatively early into the second trimester so abortions indicated due to poor fetal health are able to be planned well before the fetus reaches viability.

In regards to your question about a raped 10 year old becoming pregnant, that happened about 20 years ago at the OB/GYN office where my mom works. A mom brought in her 10 year old daughter concerned that the girl might have a tumor since her abdomen was swelling. Turns out that the girl was 5 months pregnant and because she was so young, the pregnancy had drained so much energy from her pubescent body that she was malnourished, dehydrated, and thoroughly ill. She'd only had one menstrual period shortly before her 10th birthday. She had to be sent to a teaching hospital in another state because her health was so frail from the pregnancy and that was the last my mom ever heard about her. They weren't sure who the father was since, during the exam, it was revealed that both her cousin and the step-dad had raped the girl...

But the prosecution for the rape is an entirely different issue from the protection of the girl's health, and it is irrelevant to the needs to terminate a second trimester pregnancy for health reasons be that the health of the woman and/or the fetus.

I wish I could recommend individual posts!

it would be nice if there were a way to flag some highly informative posts for archive in some kinda knowledge-base.

I hope that kid is okay, whereeverr she is.

Nobody backs late-term abortions, and I'm sure there was a damn good reason why Tiller would have performed one.

Enjoy your stay.

It will be brief

a reality check. It is an abomination to allow ignorance of a subject to cloud one's judgement.

Now I hope Attorney General Dickhead gets his ass kicked. x(

:applause: