Medical Board Should Revoke Licenses of Tiller Abortion Associates, Group Says
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 12, 2009
Topeka, KS (LifeNews.com) — A Kansas pro-life group says the state medical board should move ahead with efforts to revoke the medical licenses of abortion practitioners who were colleagues of slain late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller. Kansans for Life says three Tiller colleagues may have violations that the board should examine.
At the time of Tiller’s death, the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, which regulates physicians in the state, had taken two of the three steps needed to revoke his medical license.
The board had declared as a finding of fact that illegal post-viability abortions had been performed at Tiller’s abortion business over the last six years because they were done without the legally required referrals of a doctor not financially or legally affiliated with the abortion practitioner.
State law requires a second doctor to sign off on the supposed validity of the late-term abortion and that the physician have no relationship with the one doing the abortions.
However, Tiller, and his colleagues, relied on Kristin Neuhaus to sign off on the abortions and the medical board said Neuhaus derived her entire income from okaying abortions at Tiller’s business.
"The Board’s assertion of criminal activity deserves continued aggressive action to prevent any and all Kansas abortion clinics from undermining the independent second physician requirement, or any other part of the 1998 post-viable ban in Kansas," KFL director Mary Kay Culp told LifeNews.com.
"Therefore, we continue to call for regulatory actions and revocation of the medical licenses of not only Kristin Neuhaus, but Tiller’s former associates LeRoy Carhart, Shelly Sella and Susan Robinson," Culp continued. "In March, Tiller testified in court that these doctors also used Neuhaus for their referrals at his clinic."
Following Tiller’s shooting death, the state board dropped its complaint against Tiller’s license, but Culp says her group wants the board to move forward with other complaints.
"Our concern is that unless the Board follows up on other related open complaints, the illegal activity cited could be continued by these other doctors who also utilized Neuhaus for referrals. This is especially urgent given that Leroy Carhart has announced his intention to open a late-term abortion clinic in Kansas," she told LifeNews.com.
An earlier, and still active, Kansans for Life complaint specifically asked the Board to take action against all Kansas-licensed doctors involved in illegal late-term abortions.
The 1998 Kansas ban on the abortion of viable babies has narrow exceptions, and carefully crafted requirements. Under the law, post-viability abortions can only be allowed if a second, unaffiliated Kansas-licensed physician verifies such an abortion is needed to prevent the death of the mother or irreversible & substantial bodily damage to, the mother.
According to Kansans for Life, since 1998 abortion practitioners have been required to file state abortion reports, and none of the over 5,000 late-term abortions (nearly 3,000 of them on viable unborn babies) have been reported as done to prevent the mother’s death.
Related web sites:
Kansans for Life – https://www.kfl.org
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