KS Abortionist Neuhaus “can’t pay” but will get appeal

Kris Neuhaus

The Kansas state Board of Healing Arts will likely never be repaid the $93,000.00 it already spent revoking the medical license of abortionist Kris Neuhaus. And it’s hard to believe the ongoing expenses of the district court and the Board involved in her appeal will ever be reimbursed either.

The protracted medical license revocation action against Neuhaus was based on ‘psych referrals’ she made for 11 teens receiving late-term Wichita abortions in 2003. The Board spent $75,000.00 for expert testimony and review of Neuhaus’ records for those cases, finding that she failed in multiple ways to meet medical standards.

District Judge Franklin Theis is presiding over Neuhaus’ appeal of that revocation, which is in the initial stages. The Board issued its final revocation order July 5, 2012, allowing a delay in repayment, but then asked the court to enforce the Board’s right to require a bond. This was the only time in Theis’ memory, he said, that the Board had asked for a bond in this kind of proceeding.

Abortion attorneys argue Neuhaus is impoverished and would not be able to pay the $93,000.00 “in the foreseeable future.”

They said she could only afford a bond of $100, which Judge Theis said “would be a joke.”

Theis then ruled that Neuhaus merely “sign a statement saying she’ll pay any judgment imposed by the courts.”

Neuhaus was uncovered in 2006 as the sole source of second opinions for abortions performed after viability by George Tiller. Under the law, totally “independent” referrals would give proof that the abortion was needed to prevent irreversible and substantial bodily damage- or death– to the mother. Although Tiller escaped a misdemeanor conviction in March 2009 for repeatedly using Neuhaus’ services, the Healing Board proceeded with license revocation filings for Tiller until his murder in May 2009.

Although the Board has regrettably taken no disciplinary actions against other physician associates of Tiller who also used Neuhaus’ referrals, they did proceed with revocation against Neuhaus –a licensee they twice officially called “a danger to the public” and first began to discipline fifteen years ago. (see Neuhaus Board history here)

Neuhaus has no viable medical practice and for the last few years held a strictly limited license until it was revoked. According to sworn testimony, she has worked at a variety of part time positions including a blood bank, laser hair removal salon and an indigent clinic. Yet, under a “due process” claim, she will continue to eat up Court and Board expenses during an appeal process for which she has virtually no chance of winning.

The awful irony is that the court is bending over backward to give Neuhaus the due process that thousands of children and their mothers were denied in Kansas clinics.

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Trust Women takes over Tiller abortion clinic property

After over a year of threats by ex-Tiller political operative, Julie Burkhart, to re-establish a Wichita abortion business, the Wichita Eagle reports that Burkhart’s Trust Women group officially owns the old Tiller clinic building.

The Eagle obtained no definitive information about how Burkhart would be using the building, but Kansans for Life had alerted its members September 12th of credible inside information that a Wichita clinic staffed with three non-Kansas abortionists would indeed be opening in January 2013.

If in fact Burkhart does open a business with itinerant abortionists, women will be in much jeopardy. Out-of-state physicians do not have

• a stake in the community with family ties,
• a medical reputation to maintain,
• a permanent real estate investment.

Abortion clinics are notorious for sending abortion-injured women to the hospital without the necessary first-hand information for accurate emergency treatment– apparently what happened in the Tonya Reaves botched abortion death from a Chicago-area Planned Parenthood this July.

This is the reason that a provision requiring local hospital privileges for itinerant abortionists was passed in 2011 as part of the abortion clinic licensure law.  Unfortunately, this law is under injunction and thus not in effect, so the Eagle report is wrong that at least one of Burkhart’s abortionists would have to attain hospital privileges within 30 miles of the clinic.

An abundance of incidents across this nation have documented a variety of schemes with abortionists crossing state lines to take advantage of differing state laws governing abortion. Without a clinic licensure law in effect, the Kansas state health department cannot inspect, restrain, or penalize clinics.

Additionally, the Healing Arts Board cannot discipline a non-resident abortionist who drops his/her license and leaves Kansas.  Even if malpractice has occurred, the Board cannot chase abortionists into other states and force them to return to testify in Kansas, nor can the Board compel information from other state medical boards.  And certainly, personal lawsuits for injury and death on behalf of a woman or her family cannot be filed in other states.

If the information Kansans for Life received is true, the abortionists for the slated new clinic are residents of Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska. Nebraska abortionist LeRoy Carhart, a longtime Tiller-associate, still possesses a Kansas license.

Two other former itinerant Tiller abortionists, Shelly Sella and Susan Robinson, did not renew their Kansas medical licenses after Tiller’s murder.  Although this past year, Kansas State Board of Healing Arts did revoke the medical license of Tiller associate, Kris Neuhaus, for repeatedly violating the medical standard of care, they took no actions to discipline Carhart, Sella and Robinson for fraudulent late-term abortions.

Kansans for Life Executive Director, Mary Kay Culp, commented:

“It is tragic Burkhart appears poised to re-engage in destroying unborn children and exploiting women for money, again using out-of-state abortionists who can escape discipline from the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, and not yet subject to our new licensure law due to litigation; Burkhart knows that illegal abortions in Wichita were not penalized, and more recently, Planned Parenthood escaped prosecution when state documents were shredded with impunity–a situation that key legislators are currently investigating.”

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Judge agrees with KS AG: no abortion attorney payment

A.G. Schmidt

Kansas pro-lifers got good news from a federal court May 18^th: two Kansas city-area abortion clinics will have to pay their own attorney fees of over $220 thousand dollars without Kansas’ taxpayer reimbursement. Judge Carlos Marguia ruled the clinics had not “prevailed on the merits,” and thus did not qualify for state reimbursement.

Attorneys from the Center for Women’s Health (CWH) and Aid for Women (AFW) had been petitioning for state payment of their attorney fees incurred when the clinics filed to halt both the new state abortion facility licensure law and the provisional clinic regulations written by the Kansas health department (KDHE).

The clinics had sought a permanent injunction in a rushed proceeding July 1, 2011 in front of federal Judge Murguia, claiming irreparable harm would ensue if the law went into effect that day. Judge Murguia awarded only a temporary injunction, largely in order to “maintain the status quo” while issues moved forward.

In November 2011, KDHE issued permanent abortion facility regulations, using a slightly modified version of the original set. Both clinics dropped the federal lawsuit, but the injunction was retained and the lawsuit was refiled in state court by only one clinic CWH (the business of abortionists Herb Hodes and Traci Nauser).

The office of Attorney General Derek Schmidt had filed motions in opposition to paying all the abortion attorneys involved, arguing they were not entitled because such reimbursement is available for “claimants who had prevailed on the merits” in civil rights cases.  [Yes, this is a civil rights case because (hold your groans) one of the claims is that clinic regulation violates a woman’s civil right to obtain an abortion.]

Beyond ineligibility for reimbursement, the Attorney General claimed national and local abortion attorneys had inflated billable hours and wage rates to make a “windfall” off of Kansas taxpayers.  The irony is evident: abortion advocates have been complaining that the defense of pro-life laws is a wasteful depletion of the treasury, and then their own attorneys try to rip-off that same treasury!

Thankfully, that won’t happen at this juncture, due to the litigators working for the AG office.

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Kansas wants clinic lawyers denied overbilled fees

UPDATE, May 18:  Court denies abortion attorney fees.
Abortion supporters, including the Wichita Eagle editorial staff (here, here, here, here, and here and now here) take every opportunity to complain that Kansas tax money is being spent on litigation to uphold pro-life laws enacted in 2011. However, evidence now shows that it is actually abortion clinic attorneys who are trying to cheat taxpayers.

The most recent defense filing from the state of Kansas– in the lawsuit attacking a licensure law upheld in other states– is asking the court to deny any fee award to national and local attorneys for two abortion businesses:  the Center for Women’s Health and Aid for Women.

At issue is a “windfall” for clinic attorneys– according to the State– including over $78,000 for ineligible legal work as well as using indefensible attorney rates of $400 per hour.  All but one of the clinics’ attorneys lack ANY experience in this type of litigation, yet they charged nearly double what attorneys experienced in this specialty would charge- $225 per hour.

State attorneys (including the office of Attorney General Derek Schmidt) demonstrated how the court is being wrongly asked to pay

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KS abortionist Neuhaus revocation hits procedural snag

A final ruling on the long-sought revocation of Kansas abortionist Ann Kristen (Kris) Neuhaus has been delayed until the next meeting of the state Board of Healing Arts in mid-June.

The Associated Press reported Friday that Board President Gary Counselman said Board members were “very uncomfortable proceeding at this point,” because members didn’t receive copies of 70 pages of previously submitted legal arguments from Neuhaus’ attorneys until Thursday afternoon. They wanted more time to review them.

The petition to revoke, filed in April of 2010, “accuses Neuhaus of negligence in conducting mental health exams for 11 patients, ages 10 to 18, who terminated pregnancies from July to November 2003,” according to the Associated Press’s John Hanna.

“Neuhaus diagnosed the patients with acute anxiety, acute stress or single episodes of major depression, concluding their conditions met requirements in Kansas law for late-term abortions.” However, state law required independent referrals to verify that such abortions were obtained only to prevent the death of, or irreversible and substantial injury to, the mother.

All the 11 young women were in their sixth or seventh month of pregnancy when they met with Neuhaus at the Tiller facility.  Neuhaus was never trained as a psychiatric consultant, and ended up utilizing an online ‘answer tree.’

Evidence from the patient files repeatedly indicated such diagnoses were logged in and completed within 2 to 3 minutes.

Thus the teens were

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Revoked KS abortionist “recycles” abortion patient files

Krishna Rajanna

Yesterday it was revealed that disgraced Kansas City abortionist Krishna Rajanna had thrown, into a school recycling bin, abortion patient records with extensive personal-identifying information while those files were still legally required to be retained and protected. (See KC Star here and here)

Rajanna was a failed surgical internist who came to do abortions at the Aid for Women Clinic in the inner-city area of Kansas City, Kansas. Following wage disputes with abortionist co-owners Malcolm Knarr and Sherman Zaremski, Rajanna opened his own “Affordable Abortions” competing clinic just three blocks away from Aid for Women.

In 2003, after former governor Kathleen Sebelius vetoed a bill to regulate abortion facilities, one of Rajanna’s staff secretly took photos of the clinic’s outrageous sanitation and safety violations. Open drug syringes and fetal parts were stored in the staff lunch refrigerator. Patient records were in open boxes on the floor in the kitchen. Two police officers, who were called to the clinic for a robbery report, refused to sit in the roach-infested clinic. (See photos here and related posts here, here and here.)

The local District Attorney could not get the state Board of Healing Arts to inspect the clinic premises, even though the Board had already privately issued disciplinary sanctions against Rajanna,

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KU ob/gyn doctors don’t require elective abortion training

There is no reason that Kansas should succumb to the desire of the University of Kansas (KU) to continue decades of facilitating, promoting and paying for abortion training in their post-graduate residency program.

Kansans for Life files show that 13 of 24 Kansas abortionists (current & past) were KU medical center grads, taught at KU, or both.

The policy (see earlier post) of the national accreditation agency, ACGME, is being waved at lawmakers as if it absolutely demands abortion training.  But a careful examination shows it merely requires that accredited ob/gyn residency programs provide training in abortion complications and not impede (or discriminate against) residents who seek abortion training separately ‘on their own time and own dime.’

This is solely a negative requirement— it does not require Kansas to help them do so, much less to pay for it. And thus, Kansas House Bill 2598 poses no threat to accreditation. And even if it were a threat, state sovereignty determines standards for medical training and practice– not ACGME. For 16 years, ACGME has tried to bully medical schools into helping recruit physicians to offset the continuing reduction in numbers of abortionists.

Furthermore, HB 2598 would prohibit state entities (including KU residents that are insured as state employees) from performing abortions EXCEPT those necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant woman (see section 6). HB 2598 is certainly not endangering pregnant women who face life-threatening situations. All ob/gyns are trained to handle all emergencies in educational settings and hospitals without having to participate in elective abortion. For example:

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Former & wannabe abortionists their own worst enemy

Mila Means (LATimes photo)

Some recent pro-abortion media entries (see here and here), along with a piece in today’s Los Angeles Times, bemoan the alleged “hounding” of Mila Means, a would-be Kansas abortionist, and Kris Neuhaus, an ex-abortionist facing the imminent loss of her medical license. Collectively, the accounts blame a pro-life governor and pro-life bills (which are conveniently mischaracterized), in the process ignoring that both women have a disciplinary history with the state Healing Arts Board.

According to Times reporter Jenny Deam, in the summer of 2010, “Means began going each weekend to Kansas City, Kan., to learn first trimester abortion procedure.”  For $20,000 she bought out the equipment of another abortionist “which cut deeply into her practice’s meager budget.” So, according to the story, why is Means not doing abortions? “It’s the lawmakers who now prove to be her most daunting opponent,” Deam writes. “She says she doesn’t dare go forward now. So she waits.”

Really? No.

In fact, there is no practical barrier to opening an abortion business in Kansas. State health department rules for abortion clinics developed in 2011–while attained by Planned Parenthood– were successfully enjoined

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Has Kansas abortionist Neuhaus finally lost her license?

Neuhaus' current KU photo as a "fellow" of public health

Has the Kansas medical license of Kris Neuhaus actually been revoked by the state Healing Arts Board? Not quite, despite certain media headlines.

An “initial order,” that her license be revoked was sent to the Board by Administrative Law Judge, Edward Gashler, who presided over her disciplinary hearing this winter.  The order was made public Tuesday. (Kansans for Life was notified, because we have filed formal complaints with considerable documentation against Neuhaus, accompanied by thousands of citizen signatures.)

And the order strongly indicts Neuhaus’ so-called counsel of young pregnant women seeking late-term abortions in Wichita in 2003. The order also described Neuhaus’ sole professional witness (a KU physician) as “not credible.”

But the order that her license be revoked is not operative quite yet, as it is yet to be reviewed and voted out by a majority of the Board as a “final order”.

Because such matters legally require 10 days notice, the Neuhaus matter will not be on the Board’s regularly scheduled bimonthly meeting this Friday.  It is probably headed for the Board’s April meeting agenda, although technically, the Board could ask to deal with it sooner.

(Neuhaus also is on the calendar for a separate Board-ordered hearing March 8, on whether

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The truth behind Kansas’ abortion lawsuits’ legal fees

Abortion supporters continue their brazen complaints that Kansas has already spent nearly $480,000 in legal fees defending 3 pro-life laws enacted in 2011.

But it’s those very abortion supporters that are forcing that drain in state resources, for profit and ideological motives, plain and simple.

Let’s look at the three lawsuits and examine what is really at stake.

1. The family planning funding prioritization is a new measure, attempted this year in differing forms by a half dozen states, with Kansas having arguably the strongest legal ground.  Wichita Judge Thomas Marten placed the law on hold by injunction and ordered supplemental money sent to the three businesses that did not meet the new criteria. The Kansas Attorney General has appealed those actions to the 10^th Circuit appellate court, and a ruling on the merits of the appeal is expected at any time.

This lawsuit was filed because financially-failing Planned Parenthood branches in Wichita and Hays, and one independent business in Dodge City, were not going to get nearly $375,000 in Title X state subsidies under the new law. No services formerly provided to Kansas women were being eliminated.  In fact, the only change was that the state would only contract for reimbursements with public clinics serving the poor, and in fact, would provide BETTER access to a full range of health care.

This lawsuit is little better than extortion, backed implicitly by the pro-abortion Obama administration and the federal agency that controls Title X money–HHS, headed by former Kansas governor, Kathleen Sebelius.

2. The law banning coverage of elective abortion in private insurance plans without a separately purchased rider, is not new.  It survived past court challenges and has operated in other states, like Missouri, for decades. Part of eastern Kansas has been covered this way by Blue Cross during that time! This law is operating without an injunction, but is headed for trial next year.

This law was sued by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) ostensibly on behalf of unspecified women who can’t afford to pay for their own abortions.  But the suit is really a steppingstone to changing the “privacy” basis that undergirds the so-called legal right to abortion. The ACLU is still searching for courts willing to rule abortion is healthcare that must be paid for under the constitutional guarantee of “equal protection.”

Although abortion lawyers have pressed this “gender equality” argument unsuccessfully for decades, they are back at it again, at OUR taxpayer expense.

3. The third lawsuit (actually a series of 3 suits) has blocked the new law instituting state licensure, oversight and inspection of abortion businesses sought by Kansans since 2002. Currently there are only 3 abortion sites in Kansas, all in the Kansas City area, although there are threats to open a new one in Wichita this summer.

After a public fuss (and a suit they filed and then dropped) the Overland Park Planned Parenthood met the new minimum standards for licensure. The other two clinics didn’t, and sued the preliminary agency regulations from KDHE, while securing an injunction. So the law is not currently in effect.

Now get this: the pro-abortion voices complaining loudly about legal fees, themselves wasted a bundle when they filed suit in federal court in July, and then switched their game plan to file suit in state court in November. So last week, lawyers for the 2 clinics formally dropped the first lawsuit and are itemizing months of legal expenses– which will get paid by state taxpayers– if the abortion team prevails in the newer suit.

Next post: the real reason the abortion clinics’ lawyers changed from federal court to state court.

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