The Witch-Burners are Alive and Sick in Kansas: Stand Up for Dr. Kristin Neuhaus against the Kansas Theocracy's Anti-Abortion Jihad
Sat, 03/03/2012

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Salem, Massachusetts of 1690 is alive and well in the state of Kansas, where a thuggish regime of charlatans currently led by Republican Governor Sam Brownback and supported by the terrorist organization Operation Rescue have been hounding doctors who have dared to provide desperate pregnant women of the midwest with access to safe abortions out of business and literally to death. (It was after a botched attempt by these theological fascists to charge and convict Dr. George Tiller of operating his abortion clinic in the state illegally that Scott Roeder, a fevered backer and confidante of activists in Operation Rescue, made the decision to kill the doctor, shooting him in the face as he greeted parishioners at his church on Sunday.)

Today, the target of Gov. Brownback and his fellow women haters and religious fanatics is Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus. A courageous physician, Neuhaus was long one of the few doctors in this benighted state, dubbed Brownbackistan by Neuhaus and her journalist/farmer husband Michael Cadell, to offer abortions. From 1999-2007 she acted as a consultant to whom Dr. Tiller could refer women and young girls -- many the victims of rape and incest -- for a second opinion required by the state.

The urgent issue today is a hearing, set for March 8 -- ironically on International Women’s Day -- of the Kansas Board of Healing Arts -- a body that oversees the licensing of doctors, chiropracters and other medical professionals. This board has been stacked over the years of Republican control of state government with hacks and shills for the anti-abortion movement, including people with close links to Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion organization that has terrorized women seeking abortions at clinics across the country, and that has inspired a number of clinic bombings and even the murders of abortion doctors. Some of the members aren’t even doctors. For example, a recent Brownback appointee to the board was Rick Macias, a lawyer for Operation Rescue and other anti-abortion organizations.

Neuhaus’s problems began in 2006, when a convicted felon, Cheryl Sullenger (who served time in federal prison for her role in a 1988 plot to blow up a California abortion clinic, who was and is a close associate of Roeder and who is a senior policy advisor to Operation Rescue), filed a complaint with the Board of Healing Arts, alleging on no evidence that Dr. Neuhaus had not been adequately evaluating the women seeking abortions at Dr. Tiller’s clinic, or properly documenting their files.

During a lengthy investigation, based upon the word of this convicted felon, the board used lies and deception to steal Dr. Neuhaus’s confidential patient medical files, first asking her to bring them with her to a hearing “for reference purposes,” with the promise that they would not be taken from her, and then confiscating them all at the hearing.

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http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1091

Thank you for this. It means so much to us know that people get it.
Kris N.

I'm sorry and angry this is happening to you and the women of Kansas. Other than signing the petition and making people aware, what else can we do to help?

Thanks for everything you do for women.

Solidarity and Welcome to DU.

Thanks Catherina,

I think the most important thing is exposure. Not sure who said it first, but sunlight really IS the best disinfectant.

The media, contrary to the blathering of conservatives, is as we know, wholly owned by them. There was an expose' of a tea-party/birther not getting a license in KS but no MSM journos, including John Hanna of the AP, have made any effort at writing a decent article about my case that covers more than scanty quotes and old article rehashes, often with factual errors.

We started a blog at www.brownbackistan.wordpress.com http://www.brownbackistan.wordpress.comwith information, articles, contacts, etc, and welcome suggestions. Kansas is being used as a template for a complete evangelical take-over of the GOP nationwide. Many factors make it favorable, and at least some of the public is starting to resist in the economic arena, but I am not optimistic that anything will change here until conditions deteriorate quite a bit further as a visible result of their policies.

As pointless as petitions can sometimes seem (I get that!!) it does at least show that people are paying attention and not happy about something. Politicians are very sensitive to poll results, a large showing has more relevance to those used to looking at numbers as an issue thermometer. Our tools should be tailored to the desired targets for best effect. Administrative law proceedings, like many aspects of our complex society, are obscure and most assume that the system functions as designed, however, its an unspoken fact that the Governor has "undue influence" down the food chain. In this case the Governor is a fundamentalist Catholic convert.

The voting members of the Board are not elected, they are appointed by the governor, and some are still there from the Sebelius era, but its a very diverse group of people from different professions, so they follow the lead of those on the Board from the profession of the person who is in question (the President is a chiropractor, but in cases involving an MD, the MDs on the Board have more sway). But the very nature of it (now a huge bureaucracy with a large legal staff) has become quite political. When Brownback took over, he cleaned out all the state employees, presumably replacing them with with politically-aligned people. Especially in these times, people aren't going to rock themselves out of the pension boat.

The result is that there is a large group of people doing obscure things that seem legitimate, and likely are, most of the time, however when it's expedient, due to the nature of things, the fallout can be spread out enough not to cause undue hardship on any one person, sort of a built-in deniability. It looks legitimate, takes efforts to document its legitimacy, understanding that the public will not take the trouble to examine the "evidence" and then it acts in ways that further the agenda (spoken, or more likely unspoken), maintaining that cloak of legitimacy.

If we have learned anything in the last year, its that there are a whole helluva lot of naked emperors strutting around everywhere. I will feel reasonably effective if at least a more few people wake up to it. Lee Camp said it best here:

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Thank you Kris. You can count on our support for exposure but please give us a little nudge whenever any specific actions come up so we can be there for you, and the women of Kansas.

I bookmarked your link and started reading the transcripts. The witch hunt is horrifying!

http://brownbackistan.wordpress.com/transcripts/

Solidarity sister

There are some here who don't get it, but many more who do.

I for one wanted to thank you for practicing medicine under very difficult conditions.

from a fellow Kansan..we're lucky to have you..

And done.

thanks so much for bringing this here.

I think I am still in denial over all this shit happening. wtf~!

edited to add: petition signed and forwarded.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41759801/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/t/rachel-maddow-show-wednesday-february-rd/

MADDOW: Let‘s start with trying to get people an understanding about what it was like to be a doctor in Kansas providing abortions. Can you just explain, sort of, what your daily life is like when you are doing that, what sort of security measures, for example, you had to take to protect yourself and protect your patients?

DR. KRISTIN NEUHAUS, FORMER ABORTION PROVIDER: Well, for one thing, I had a totally underground address, telephone numbers. Nobody knew where I actually lived. We had to use rental cars, elaborate security measures, I wore a bulletproof vest a lot of the time. I learned to shoot a firearm and kept myself armed at work, most of the time.

MADDOW: While you were actually at the office.

NEUHAUS: Yes.

MADDOW: And why? Why did you have to go to those measures?

NEUHAUS: Well, because we didn‘t really get very good enforcement of faith laws. So that we knew that there was the option of Scott Roeder, or some other person like that, just showing up and it would be up to us to protect the patients. And I felt that that would be the last line of defense in the event of someone breaking into a clinic, which happened regularly in Wichita during the period of the Summer Of Mercy.

I think, maybe, there is something interesting that this is a phenomenon that happens when you work in these, kind of, high risk environments is, for me, for one thing, I knew what I was getting into and I took precautions in the first place, so I didn‘t have people at my house. And, I think, I did enough interviews with the newspaper and television to inform people that I supported the second amendment, and I was prepared to deal with incursions. And, so, I don‘t feel that I, personally, was at risk a lot of the time.

You know, I think I got to the point where I was actually, even, in denial about it. One time I actually had to race the bomb squad in before they cordoned off the clinic.

Hey Kris! Signed the petition & will always be a supporter. Miss y'all!

Kris, ck my profile (Suz).