Doctor fights abortion law, criminal charges

The Kansas statute requires physicians to obtain a referral from an independent doctor before they can perform a late-term abortion.

By Amy Lynn Sorrel, AMNews staff. Sept. 17, 2007.

A Wichita, Kan., family physician is challenging a state law that requires a second opinion for late-term abortions, saying it interferes with doctors' medical judgment and restricts women's access to the procedures.

In June, Kansas Attorney General Paul J. Morrison criminally charged George Tiller, MD, with violating a 1998 statute that prohibits physicians from performing late-term abortions without first getting a documented referral from a second doctor "not legally or financially affiliated" with the physician doing the procedure.

Both doctors must agree that the abortion is necessary to preserve the mother's life or that continuing the pregnancy will cause her "substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function." The law includes an exception for medical emergencies.

The state alleges that Dr. Tiller and family physician Ann K. Neuhaus, MD, were not "independent" when they consulted on 19 different late-term abortion procedures. Dr. Neuhaus is not being charged in the case. Both doctors have publicly denied the allegations. Dr. Tiller's attorney declined to comment for this story. Dr. Neuhaus could not be reached for a response.

But in court documents, Dr. Tiller argues that the law is "an unconstitutional limitation on a physician's judgment and an undue burden on a woman's rights" to abortion.

He points to a 1973 Supreme Court decision in Doe v. Bolton, in which justices struck down a Georgia law requiring three doctors and a hospital staff committee to approve an abortion procedure, except in cases of rape or immediately life-threatening injury to the pregnant woman. The high court said the law infringed on a physician's right to practice medicine and patients' right to be safeguarded by their doctors.