Photo by Anαgke ©2008 ~ ♣
Good news from Kansas, for a change. First, [o]n Feb. 5, the Supreme Court granted a...request by Tiller's lawyers to delay the enforcement of a subpoena for five years' worth of records of 2,000 women who sought abortions 22 weeks or later into their pregnancies. Those would be the patient records requested by a grand jury empaneled after the forced pregnancy outfit Kansans for Life got seven thousand people to sign a petition. [You know, how you do when you just absolutely, positively must rummage through a stranger's medical chart for a bit of titillation.]
Not deterred by the failure of their initial scheme, [t]he grand jury then subpoenaed Six's [Kansas' Attorney General] office for records from 2003, obtained during an investigation when Phill Kline held the office. This prompted Attorney General Six to appeal the subpoena to the Supreme Court, resulting in a second bit of good news from Kansas:
Citing "significant issues" regarding patient privacy and a grand jury's authority to issue subpoenas, the chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily blocked enforcement of a grand jury subpoena from Sedgwick County, Kan., of medical records of women who obtained abortions after their 21st week of pregnancy at physician George Tiller's Wichita clinic, Women's Health Care Services.... The subpoena from the grand jury had ordered state Attorney General Stephen Six (D) to turn over the records of 60 women who obtained abortions at the clinic by Wednesday.
So many patient charts, so little time to 1) lie about the real reason you want to get your hands on those charts, 2) go to extraordinary lengths to expose the patients' identities, and 3) generally abuse and demean Kansas women who dare think their medical charts are not public information.