Judge sides with Kansas doctor in abortion case [Tiller's 2nd opinion]

Garden City Telegram ^ | 03/10/2014 | AP

[GIdget2004]

TOPEKA (AP) — A Kansas judge has overturned the state medical board's revocation of a doctor's license over her referrals of young patients for late-term abortions.

Shawnee County District Judge Franklin Theis ruled that State Board of Healing Arts failed to show that mental health exams provided by Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus in 2003 were inadequate. In a ruling that became public Monday, the judge ordered the board to reconsider its sanctions.

The board in 2012 revoked Neuhaus' license to provide charity care over her exams of 11 patients, ages 10 to 18, nine years earlier. The board had ratified the decision of a hearing officer, who concluded Neuhaus failed to meet accepted standards of medical care because her records didn't show that she had done thorough exams.

Neuhaus, from the small town of Nortonville about 30 miles north of Lawrence, provided second opinions in 2003 that the late Dr. George Tiller needed under Kansas law to legally terminate the pregnancies. Tiller, who was among a few U.S. physicians known to perform abortions in the final weeks of pregnancy, was shot to death in May 2009 by a man professing strong anti-abortion views.

Theis said in his order it was clear that Neuhaus' record keeping fell below "any reasonably required standard of care for their maintenance." But the judge also said the hearing officer's conclusion that Neuhaus provided inadequate care rested "solely on an inference" from problems with the doctor's records.

"In this Court's view, such an inference is too slim, too frail and too conjectural to support any of his conclusions reached beyond a breach of adequate record keeping," Theis wrote in his 84-page decision.

[Mrs. Don-o]

If I'm understanding this correctly, "second Opinion" doc Neuhaus "counseled" young teens to get 3rd trimester babyslaughters from the notorious Tiller the Killer, incredibly more traumatic and more physically dangerous on a young girl than a normal birth, and the records show sketchy-slipshod counseling. The judge rules that she should keep her license, because it's not necessarily disgustingly substandard counseling, it could'a been merely disgustingly substandard record-keeping.

This judge will face a Judge.