Clinic must release abortion data

A Kansas judge yesterday ruled that an abortion clinic must turn over hundreds of medical records to a grand jury beginning today.

Retired Sedgwick County District Judge Paul Buchanan rejected the motions of lawyers representing Wichita, Kan.-based Women’s Health Care Services Inc. and Dr. George Tiller to quash subpoenas issued this month by a grand jury investigating the clinic for illegal late-term abortions.

Instead, Judge Buchanan said the clinic and the Sedgwick County district attorney’s offices today should begin discussing details of how the patient records — redacted of names and other identifying information — will be turned over. The grand jury’s subpoenas requested the records by 9 a.m. tomorrow.

Judge Buchanan said he would appoint an independent lawyer and a doctor to review the records before they are handed over to the grand jury.

The ruling is “very disturbing,” said Bonnie Scott Jones, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), which filed legal papers in support of Dr. Tiller’s legal team.

Dr. Tiller’s attorneys are likely to file a motion with the Kansas Supreme Court, asking it to overturn Judge Buchanan’s decision, Miss Jones said. The CRR, as well as women whose clinic records would be turned over to the grand jury, also may file appeals, she said.

Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, a pro-life group that helped gather signatures last year to start the grand jury investigation, said the panel was “incredibly gracious” by giving the clinic two weeks to produce the records.

Medical records are seized all the time, said Mr. Newman, citing a recent case in which a Kansas doctor under grand jury investigation for being a “pill mill” had his offices raided and files taken by law-enforcement officials.

“What about the HIPAA [medical privacy] laws there?” said Mr. Newman. “Quite frankly, I’m tired of the abortion industry getting a pass and treated by a special set of laws. … You can’t hide behind privacy in order to break the law.”

The grand jury subpoenas were issued Jan. 22 and Jan. 23. One asks for medical records of all patients who received abortions at Dr. Tiller’s clinic when they were at 22 weeks’ gestation or longer, between July 1, 2003, and Jan. 18, 2008. The other asks for records of patients who, at the same stage of pregnancy, consulted with the clinic but did not undergo abortions.

The subpoenas became public after Dr. Tiller’s legal team at Monnat & Spurrier filed motions seeking to stop or limit the process, which they said would involve 2,000 patients.

Yesterday, attorneys with CRR filed affidavits from two women — one who received an abortion and one who didn’t, during the requested time frame — who protested the request for clinic records.

“I believe it is criminal and immoral that I, and other patients like me, should be subjected to the mere possibility that our private medical records become public,” said an affidavit signed by “Mary Moe,” who said she underwent a late-term abortion reluctantly because her baby had a “rare and severe fetal anomaly that would … result in the child living in a vegetative state, if at all.”

Pro-life groups argue that Kansas late-term abortion law doesn’t allow abortions for fetal anomalies. The law permits abortions after 21 weeks’ gestation if it will save the mother’s life or save her from “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” Two doctors, who are financially independent of each other, must approve such late-term abortions and state their findings in a report to the state.