by Cheryl Sullenger
WICHITA, KS — Over five months after a 19-year old Texas teen died in January during a late-term abortion received at Women’s Health Care Services, the infamous late-term abortion mill owned and operated by George R. Tiller, the autopsy report is still unavailable. The delay in releasing the autopsy has placed on hold an investigation by the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts into possible improprieties that may have led to the unfortunate maternal death.
Why would the County Medical Examiner withhold this autopsy report for over five months when others are routinely released within 6-8 weeks? Evidence points to the possibility of a cover-up, and the key to understanding why this young woman died may lie in the fact that she had Down’s Syndrome.
Tiller is a man who prides himself of ridding society of the unfit or the imperfect. He describes himself as the “doctor of last resort” for women bearing children with “fetal anomalies” including Down’s Syndrome. He has made it his job to kill disabled people in the womb under the guise of alleviating their “suffering.”
With that in mind, let us examine the events of last January when Tiller and his employee, partial-birth abortionist LeRoy Carhart of Omaha, Nebraska, were presented with a pregnant young lady who happened to have Down’s Syndrome. There were a number of decisions made that, if done differently, may have spared the life of this special young lady. These decisions indicate that the Tiller/Carhart team did not care if she died.
First was the reckless decision to abort the late-term child at his clinic, instead of a hospital. The fact that the mother was Down’s Syndrome increased the risk factors for a dangerous late-term abortion, but Tiller did not take the precaution of seeking to have the surgery done in a hospital setting where complications could be immediately addressed. Instead he began the three to four day abortion procedure with the probable help of Carhart, at his abortion clinic, which is not equipped to handle life-threatening complications. But something went terribly wrong, and this started a cascade of events that culminated in the death of the young lady, which we will refer to as Anna.
Next, a non-medical Tiller employee named Marguerite Reed placed a call to 911 emergency dispatch. (Click here to listen to the call.) She was evasive and would not directly answer the dispatcher’s questions. Although Anna lay dying, Reed begged, “Please, please, please, no lights and no sirens.” This gave the indication to emergency responders that the situation was not an emergency. Don’t rush. It’s not important.
When asked what the problem was, Reed placed the dispatcher on hold for 44 seconds, while Anna’s life ebbed away. Although we do not know what transpired in those precious seconds, it is reasonable to assume that the employee went to ask her boss how much, or how little, she should tell the dispatcher. When she returned to the phone she would only state that they had a lady that “needed to go to the hospital” and concealed the serious nature of the medical emergency. This caused a delay in emergency workers reaching Anna and delayed possible life-saving care.
The Computer Aided Dispatch Transcript, obtained with the audio file of the emergency call indicates that someone may have lied to dispatchers. (Click here to read the transcript.) The dispatch reads, “She does not have chest pain. She is completely awake (alert). She is breathing normally. She has not fainted. She has pain above the belly button (navel).”
Confidential sources have told Operation Rescue that Anna hovered in and out of a coma for hours and was hemorrhaging, and that the 911 call was placed only after she had gone into cardiac arrest. Both can’t be true, but the fact that Anna is dead tends to support the version of events relayed by deeply reliable sources, which wish to remain anonymous.
Anna was loaded into an ambulance and rushed to the Wesley Medical Center Emergency Room. In a departure from his documented routine, Tiller did not accompany his patient to the hospital in the ambulance. He was driven to the hospital in his private vehicle by one of his office workers, Sara Phares Brown, and arrived at the hospital several minutes after the ambulance. He did not provide the care and moral support in the ambulance that he had supplied on the previous four abortion injuries requiring emergency hospitalization documented by Operation Rescue. Why?
Tiller is prone to creating adages that govern his world of so-called ethics, or lack thereof. “We have learned that patients don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” is a statement posted on his web site and occasionally displayed on a banner in his abortion mill parking lot. Perhaps Tiller did not care enough about Anna to get in the ambulance with her, as he had each of his other four patients. Could her having Down’s Syndrome have had anything to do with it? He believes these people are better off dead. Perhaps there was a lapse in judgment where he could not distinguish the difference between aborting pre-born babies and killing a 19-year old girl. Or maybe Tiller simply decided to take his eugenic philosophy to the logical next level and get rid of a young lady that he believed never should have been born.
It may have been intentional neglect on Tiller’s part that led to Anna’s death. Because she was Down’s Syndrome, he did not care if she died — in fact, evidence seems to indicate that he withheld information and care that may have insured her survival. If he did have concern for Anna’s well-being, he would have scheduled her abortion at the hospital, as he did with a patient on June 1, 2005. If he cared about Anna’s life, he would have made sure emergency workers knew the exact nature of Anna’s most serious condition, perhaps even placing the call himself as he did for patients on February 17 and May 11, 2005. He would have accompanied her to the hospital has he did with patients on at least four other occasions in a 13-month time-span.
It is possible that his eugenics philosophy of ridding the world of the infirmed, coupled with his apparent belief that he is above the law caused Tiller to make decisions that ultimately led to Anna’s death.
Eugenics is a big part of Tiller’s professional life. Although Down’s Syndrome is not fatal to the child nor does it endanger a mother’s physical health, Tiller readily aborts these babies at an alarming frequency. In fact, these abortions may be illegal under Kansas law, which specifically prohibits the abortion of viable babies except when the mother’s life is in danger. The Attorney General of Kansas, Phil Kline, is investigating Tiller for performing illegal late-term abortions, and is being blocked access to the medical records that would prove Tiller’s guilt or innocence. What is Tiller hiding?
According to a recent LA Times article, Tiller has a poster mounted to the ceiling in his abortion mill above the procedure table where women lay to receive the fatal injection into their babies’ hearts prior to the induction of labor. The poster features a photo of dolphins with the caption, “Set Them Free.” Tiller believes that by killing babies with Down’s Syndrome and other birth defects, even minor, operable ones such as cleft palate or too many fingers or toes, he is somehow doing the world a favor.
He may have even believed he had set Anna free, as he does with the pre-born Down’s Syndrome babies he routinely aborts. But that was not Tiller’s decision to make, and if he did intentionally contribute to her death, there is a word for that: MURDER.
The only thing that can shed light on what really happened to Anna is her autopsy report, which has been withheld from release for over five months. It is well known that Tiller has many political connections within the local city and county where he operates. His Political Action Committee, ProKanDo, invests hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaign treasuries of Kansas politicians at every level of government to insure he can continue his abortion business unimpeded. The District Attorney for Sedgwick County, Nola Folston, is said to be a good personal friend of Tiller’s. The county’s unreasonable delay at releasing the autopsy report reeks of a cover-up for Tiller’s misdeeds in order to protect their precious campaign cash cow.
There is a more sinister reason why authorities may be covering for Tiller. It would not be the first time prominent people have sought the services of abortionists to cover their sexual indiscretions, then owe favors in exchange for silence. If this kind of corruption truly exists, it must be exposed for the sake of other women like Anna.
“For Tiller, age does not appear to be a factor — he will kill a Down’s Syndrome child at nine weeks, nine months, or 19 years,” said Operation Rescue president Troy Newman, who has studied Tiller’s killing methods and philosophy and is working to bring him to justice.
“It is a sick mind that would take the life of another because he is personally prejudiced against their disability, either intentionally as he does through abortion, or through intentional neglect as he appears to have done in Anna’s case,” said Newman.
In the meantime, each week Tiller continues to abort the disabled and the infirmed, including those with Down’s Syndrome, possibly illegally, and without any accountability whatsoever. As long as the autopsy report on Anna’s death is withheld from release, and therefore unavailable to investigators and the public alike, his private little war against the disabled, now waged without regard to age, will continue.