Kansas Doctor May Lose License For Refusing To Force 10-Year-Old To Birth
11:24 pm - 08/10/2012
The Kansas State Board of Healing Arts, the governing body that regulates the practice of medicine in the state, stripped the medical license of a woman who refused to force a mentally-ill 10 year old to give birth.
As Robin Marty reports, Dr. Ann Neuhaus became the target of domestic terror group Operation Rescue after her colleague, Dr. George Tiller, was murdered. Neuhaus assisted Tiller by providing second opinions for mental health exceptions for late-term abortions.
Operation Rescue filed a negligence complaint against Neuhaus alleging that her exams were not thorough enough to support her medical conclusions and her follow-up care was inadequate because she did not recommend counseling or hospitalization after each procedure.
Neuhaus offered a rebuttal of her own. “To even claim that isn’t medically necessary qualifies as gross incompetence,” said Neuhaus. “Someone’s 10 years old, and they were raped by their uncle and they understand that they’ve got a baby growing in their stomach and they don’t want that. You’re going to send this girl for a brain scan and some blood work and put her in a hospital?”
Like other states Kansas has made recent attempts to stack their medical review board with anti-choice advocates like former Operation Rescue attorney Richard Macias. When hearing the case against Dr. Neuhaus, the board offered up their own expert to determine if any breach of the standard of care occurred. Not surprisingly, the witnessed insisted that in no cases is abortion a treatment that could be seen as beneficial to a patient’s mental health, further clouding the waters as to the kind of care girls and women can expect in the state of Kansas.
Nuehaus will appeal the ruling. If she loses she will have her license permanently revoked.
SOURCE
This is Kansas. I left for a reason and it wasn't just because the weather can get reallll scary.
Did anyone hear about how the AP has gotten in on this bullshit? Rachel Maddow mentioned it on her show last week, but I don't remember seeing anything about it here. Apparently the AP published an article where they literally said that the reason George Tiller was murdered was because he wasn't "brought to justice" by the attorney general for his actions. The AP.
Seriously, fuck everything.
WTF?
I'd like to see the polls worded like this:
Do you support:
a. A woman's right to make private medical decisions with her doctor without the interference of the state.
b. Uninhibited legal enforcement of pregnancy.
Let's even this whole language thing up a bit.
I can't believe we have to do this All. Over. Again.
It makes me weep for my previous home.
Neuhaus sounds fucking awesome. You know, it's so enraging that doctors who are actually capable of doing the right thing are the ones who find themselves in danger of losing their licence. What the fuck else could she have done here, put the 10-year-old rape survivor through more trauma? Trauma there was an obvious way to avoid?
Pro-lifers are just such scum. If punishing someone who was raped with an unwanted pregnancy or taking revenge on a doctor who won't stand for it is their code of "ethics"...
Needless to say, I hope she wins her appeal.
This doctor made the right decision, and I hope what happens to her reflects that.
However, I do differentiate between people who don't like/agree with abortion, and those who want it criminalised. And it seems 'pro-life' for many means you don't like abortion, not necessarily that you want it to be illegal, because these sorts of groups have successfully turned pro-choice into a term that means 'abort all the foetuses!'
Its damn well why when the antichoicers were out a month ago on my street I gleefully told each one of them to fuck right off as I went by.
CSB time.
So my mom is a nurse, and my folks are nominally pro-life. At least that's how they identify, though they don't believe that the gov't should legislate on their beliefs. But they'll trot out the ".... but using for birth control!" crap and *sigh* ANYWAY.
When I was 13 or so... we frequently talked politics and stuff at the dinner table... Mom talked about a co-worker who came to her for advice because he knew she was a devout Christian. His 11yo daughter was pregnant (mental illness wasn't a factor; I don't know the circumstances, nor are they really relevant), and he logically knew as a medical professional that she was not physically nor emotionally ready for pregnancy, childbirth, OR a child. But he was struggling with his religious beliefs.
I remember very clearly my mom saying how she told him to get it done, because God would care what was best for that little girl. That He would understand and forgive. That we all do crappy things in this world that are necessary and God does not have a heart of stone. (And, well, then the medical-based spiel of "HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU CONSIDER LETTING YOUR DAUGHTER GO THROUGH THIS????")
I do not fucking understand people that are arguing for this doctor to have her license revoked when what she's done has ensured that little girl's quality of life. What the FUCK people. Why the HELL do you want to torture a little girl even more than she already has been?
I hoep the court sees this the same way.
There's no way she consented to this. There's no way she could possibly be ready, emotionally or physically or in any way at all. If you make her give birth before her hips have developed into their adult configuration, it might well kill her.
Good on this doctor.
Edited at 2012-08-12 04:36 am (UTC)
I hope that her uncle is doing at least 20 years for this crime.
I feel so bad for this little girl. I hope she is able to find some mental health consoling.
As for the uncle, hope Katherine Heigl finds him in her cutting shears sights. Disgusting (can't find the proper word to describe him). Pond scum is better than he is.
I hate the world.
Edited at 2012-08-12 06:10 pm (UTC)
Can we highlight this part too? Since they revoked her license on some loophole of "negligence" charges and many of the commenters here seem to have missed that point.
I don't know what the recommended medical and counseling process is post-abortion, or if it is actually mandated in Kansas (this articles isn't very clearly worded on that point), but all this sounds like just another way to make abortion as legally inconvenient and costly as possible for both women and their doctors.
*edit for spelling
Edited at 2012-08-13 03:11 pm (UTC)