Jurors Acquit Kansas Doctor in a Late-Term Abortion Case

[moobu2]

This poor guy and his family's been relentlessly harassed, been bombed and shot in both arms, dragged off to jail on trumped up charges, and it doesn’t look like they'll stop anytime soon.

WICHITA, Kan. — After years of investigations and four days of testimony, jurors here took just 45 minutes on Friday to acquit a controversial abortion doctor of charges that he performed 19 illegal late-term abortions in 2003.

Kansas law permits late-term abortions when two independent doctors agree that the pregnant woman would be irreparably harmed by giving birth

Prosecutors charged that the doctor, George Tiller, had an improper financial relationship with a doctor from Lawrence, Kristin Neuhaus, who provided a second opinion in the 19 cases cited.

Dr. Tiller’s clinic is one of three in the United States that perform late-term abortions, and he has been reviled by anti-abortion forces for decades.


<snip>

In 1986, a bomb exploded on the roof of his clinic here, Women’s Health Care Services. In 1991, some 2,000 protesters were arrested outside during summer-long protests; in 1993, Dr. Tiller was shot in both arms by an anti-abortion activist while driving away from the clinic. Protests continue there almost daily.

“It’s been a long ordeal for his patients, Dr. Tiller and his family,” the lead defense lawyer, Dan Monnat, said Friday outside the courtroom. “They’re just happy it’s over.”



NEW YORK TIMES

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. They are now trying to take away his medical license

They will never leave this man alone.

[bluestateguy]

2. Abortion prohibitions are/will be impossible to enforce

Why? Because there will be a substantial number of people that will refuse to convict someone of performing or receiving an abortion. They will be nullifying jurors.

Defense attorneys would also do their best to strike jurors who hold anti-abortion views from the jury pool before the trial, making a conviction all the more difficult.

[bobburgster]

3. Sad!

I feel for the doctor and his family....damn anti-abortionist don't need to act like rabid dogs.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. To me it is sick and illogical for "pro life" people to try

to kill this man and the people at his clinic.

Do they honestly think that if they shut him down abortion will magically go away? Aren't they aware of the fact that back alley abortions were very common in the time before Roe v Wade? The whole point of the pro-choice policy is to make abortion a safe option.

[JerseygirlCT]

5. And I really wonder about their compassion - when so many of the

women seeking this doctor's services are there not because of some inconvenient pregnancy, but because continuing the pregnancy would severely harm or even kill them. Women who desperately wanted a baby, but are now faced with either carrying a terribly deformed baby, only to deliver and watch it die, or sometimes even a baby that's already dead.

These people take no care for her life, or for her health. Or even for the awful choice they're faced with. It's all about satisfying their distorted need for this "cause". It's really sick.