A noon deadline passed Thursday, and a grand jury received nothing from abortion provider George Tiller. Instead, his lawyers rushed to appeal to the Kansas Supreme Court an order to surrender the medical records of 2,000 women.
And they sought and received another hearing this morning to seek further privacy protections in Sedgwick County District Court.
Tuesday, Wichita lawyer Dan Monnat, who has represented Tiller in grand jury investigations into his practice at Women’s Health Care Services, said Roe v. Wade “might just be pages in a dusty law book” if not for people such as Tiller.
Doctors such as Tiller, Monnat said, use the “power of Roe v. Wade to help women with excruciating decisions.”
Dan Monnat, a Wichita lawyer who represents Tiller, said that local and state prosecutors have found little wrong with the doctor’s practices, as has the state Board of Healing Arts.
“Unfortunately, there are a small number of extremely loud people who have organized a no-holds-barred campaign designed to take these rights away from women,” Monnat said.
Tiller’s defense attorneys, Lee Thompson and Dan Monnat, issued a statement Friday denouncing the grand jury investigation as a “grandstand for anti-choice zealots” when told by the AP of the testimony and binders.
“Hopefully the grand jurors will very quickly see that this proceeding is a political witch hunt brought by a few people who disagree with a woman’s constitutional right to choose, decide not to squander taxpayer money on it and go home,” said Wichita attorney Dan Monnat, who represents Tiller.
“We feel it is a completely politically motivated and completely unnecessary expenditure of taxpayer dollars,” Tiller’s attorneys, Dan Monnat and Lee Thompson, said in a written statement Monday.
The Kansas Supreme Court has ruled that a Sedgwick County grand jury investigation into a doctor who performs late-term abortions can go forward.
The ruling, issued Thursday, dismissed a petition filed last month by Dr. George Tiller, one of the nation’s few physicians who performs late-term abortions. He challenged the legality of the grand jury proceedings.
The state’s highest court says a Sedgwick County grand jury created by a citizen petition drive led by abortion foes can proceed with its investigation of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few physicians in the nation who performs late-term abortions.
Tiller’s lawyer, Dan Monnat, said that politics, not the law, is the driving force against Tiller. He said the lawmakers at Friday’s conference “get re-elected by fomenting opposition to a woman’s right to choose.”
A Sedgwick County District Court judge heard arguments, but did not rule, on whether the prosecution of a Wichita abortion provider is constitutional.
A lawyer for Wichita abortion provider George Tiller began presented arguments this afternoon, asking a Judge Clark Owens to dismiss the misdemeanor criminal charges against the doctor.
