New Strategies by Opponents

Several years ago it became clear to anti-abortion leaders that they needed
a new strategy to shut down Dr. Tiller. They eased off their more combative
protest tactics and resolved to rely more on the courts, the Kansas
Legislature and the news media to attack him.

They also decided to sharpen their focus on late-term abortions.

Dr. Tiller's clinic Web site boasted that he had more experience with
late-term abortions "than anyone else currently practicing in the Western
Hemisphere." Since 1998, interviews and state statistics show, his clinic
performed about 4,800 late-term abortions, at least 22 weeks into gestation,
around the earliest point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb. At
22 weeks, the average fetus is 11 inches long, weighs a pound and is
starting to respond to noise.

About 2,000 of these abortions involved fetuses that could not have survived
outside the womb, either because they had catastrophic genetic defects or
they were simply too small.

But the other 2,800 abortions involved viable fetuses. Some had serious but
survivable abnormalities, like Down syndrome. Many were perfectly healthy.

Like many states, Kansas has long placed limits on late-term abortions of
viable fetuses. They can be done only to save the woman's life or because
continuing the pregnancy would cause her a "substantial and irreversible
impairment of a major bodily function," a phrase that Kansas legal
authorities, citing United States Supreme Court cases, have said encompasses
the woman's physical and mental health. The state also requires the approval
of a second Kansas physician "not legally or financially affiliated" with
the doctor performing the abortion.

Even so, Kansas law gives considerable deference to physicians' judgments.
Dr. Tiller and his staff said they had a rigorous screening process to
comply with the law.

The vast majority of women seeking late-term abortions from Dr. Tiller's
clinic were from other states, records and testimony show. Dozens more came
each year from Canada and other countries. Many were referred by their
obstetrician. Law enforcement officials sometimes gave Dr. Tiller's name to
victims of rape or incest.

Prospective patients were required to submit a battery of medical records.
They were asked whether they had considered adoption. Before meeting Dr.
Tiller, women were interviewed by at least two clinic counselors. Many of
the questions -- about appetite, sleep habits, thoughts of suicide -- were
intended to detect symptoms of severe mental illness. Patients were also
examined by a second physician, as required by law.

According to sworn testimony by his staff, hundreds of women were turned
away each year because they did not meet the legal requirements for a
late-term abortion.

When late-term abortions were done, Dr. Tiller typically injected a lethal
drug into the fetus's heart, then induced labor after the heart stopped. The
entire process typically took several days, and many patients have written
tributes about the sensitive care they received.

Abortion opponents focused on a different aspect of the procedure: the fees.
Describing Dr. Tiller's "decadent, lavish lifestyle," an Operation Rescue
Web site included a photograph of his 8,500-square-foot home.

Based on Dr. Tiller's sworn testimony, his clinic grossed at least $1.5
million in 2003 from late-term abortions, a small fraction of the total
number of abortions his clinic performed. On average, he charged $6,000 for
a late-term abortion, and by his calculation the clinic's profit margin was
38 percent.

Anti-abortion leaders were determined to demonstrate that Dr. Tiller
enriched himself by performing late-term abortions for trivial reasons, and
they believed that Kansas law offered the key to exposing that and closing
him down. A billboard in Wichita asked, "Is Tiller above the law?"

They found two powerful champions.

The first was Phill Kline, a conservative radio host and fierce abortion
opponent who was elected attorney general of Kansas in 2002 and promptly
opened an investigation into Dr. Tiller.

In 2004, Mr. Kline subpoenaed case files of 60 women and girls who had
late-term abortions performed at Dr. Tiller's clinic. (He also sought 30
files from Planned Parenthood in Overland Park.) Mr. Kline said his inquiry
centered on potential violations of the late-term abortion law and a second
law requiring physicians to report evidence of sexual abuse against minors.

The second champion was Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, host of the nation's
most-watched cable news program, who began attacking Dr. Tiller in 2005,
eventually referring to him as simply "Tiller the baby killer." Mr. Gietzen
said he and other activists fed tips to Mr. O'Reilly's staff. Mr. O'Reilly
began one program this way: "In the state of Kansas, there is a doctor,
George Tiller, who will execute babies for $5,000 if the mother is
depressed."

Dr. Tiller assembled a legal team to derail Mr. Kline's investigation. While
the Kansas Supreme Court refused to quash Mr. Kline's subpoena, it was
clearly uneasy. Noting that the files "could hardly be more sensitive," the
court ordered identifying information redacted and warned both sides to
"resist any impulse" to publicize the case.

Mr. Kline's investigators tried to identify patients anyway, court records
show. Mr. Kline also hired medical experts recommended by anti-abortion
groups and gave them access to the files without requiring them to pledge
confidentiality.

One expert, Paul McHugh, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, then
discussed the files -- though not identities -- in a videotaped interview
arranged by anti-abortion activists that quickly made its way to Mr.
O'Reilly and others in the news media.

Calling Mr. Kline's conduct "inexcusable," the Kansas Supreme Court
reprimanded him in an opinion that questioned his ethics and honesty.
"Essentially, to Kline, the ends justify the means," the justices said.

Legal Victories

Nonetheless, Dr. McHugh's interview raised the question of whether Dr.
Tiller had used readily treatable mental health maladies as a pretext to
justify late-term abortions.

According to Dr. McHugh, the files he saw contained diagnoses like
adjustment disorder, anxiety and depression that to his eyes were not
"substantial and irreversible." He also claimed that some women offered
"trivial" reasons for wanting an abortion, like a desire to play
sports. "I
can only tell you," he said in his taped interview, "that from these
records, anybody could have gotten an abortion if they wanted one."

Yet Dr. McHugh's description of the files left out crucial bits of context.
He failed to mention, for example, that one patient was a 10-year-old girl,
28 weeks pregnant, who had been raped by an adult relative. Asked about this
omission by The New York Times, Dr. McHugh said that while the girl's case
was "terrible," it did not change his assessment: "She did not have
something irreversible that abortion could correct." (Dr. Tiller's lawyers,
who have called Dr. McHugh's description of the patient files "deeply
misleading," declined to discuss their contents.)

Not content to rely only on Mr. Kline, anti-abortion leaders also took
advantage of an obscure Kansas statute allowing residents to petition for
grand jury investigations. They gathered thousands of signatures to convene
two grand juries focusing on Dr. Tiller.

The first, in 2006, investigated the case of Christin A. Gilbert, a
19-year-old with Down syndrome who died two days after having an abortion at
Dr. Tiller's clinic. The autopsy concluded that Ms. Gilbert "died as a
result of complications of a therapeutic abortion," most likely infection.
But the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, after an 11-month investigation by two
separate panels, cleared Dr. Tiller of wrongdoing. The grand jury declined
to indict.

Mr. Newman of Operation Rescue appeared before the second grand jury armed
with a thick briefing book summarizing his group's investigation into Dr.
Tiller. The grand jury was also given access to medical records for more
than 150 randomly selected patients who had late-term abortions.

It also declined to indict.

But it did so in a way that was less an exoneration than a criticism of the
Legislature for failing to provide clearer guidelines. The law as written
and interpreted, the grand jury complained in a statement, seemed to allow
late-term abortions to prevent health problems that "as a matter of common
interpretation" were not "substantial and irreversible." The
grand jury said
lawmakers had intended to limit these late-term abortions to "only the
gravest of circumstances," yet Dr. Tiller's files "revealed a number of
questionable late-term abortions."

In 2006, Mr. Kline lost his re-election bid by 17 percentage points to Paul
J. Morrison, who made Mr. Kline's abortion investigation a major issue. To
anti-abortion activists, Mr. Kline's defeat was yet another example of Dr.
Tiller's raw clout. Dr. Tiller, they said, had given hundreds of thousands
of dollars to a political action committee that criticized Mr. Kline, who
was labeled the "Snoop Dog." They claimed that Dr. Tiller would press the
new attorney general to end Mr. Kline's investigation.

Instead, Mr. Morrison charged Dr. Tiller with 19 misdemeanor violations of
the late-term abortion law involving the very files Mr. Kline had
subpoenaed.

Dr. Tiller was charged with violating the provision requiring the
independent approval of a second Kansas doctor. The same doctor, Ann K.
Neuhaus, had signed off on all 19 cases. She typically saw patients at Dr.
Tiller's clinic once a week. Although patients paid her directly,
prosecutors claimed that she and Dr. Tiller had a symbiotic relationship
because his patients were her only source of income.

Dr. Tiller responded with customary self-confidence, insisting that he would
take the stand.


Jeff Snyder, SysOp - Armageddon BBS  Visit us at endtimeprophecy.org port 23
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