Topeka, KS — Monday morning, abortionist Ann Kristin Neuhaus is scheduled appear at a disciplinary hearing held by the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts (KSBHA) and answer to an 11-count petition related to illegal late-term abortion referrals and shoddy medicine that led to diagnoses that were insufficient to justify the abortions under the law.
The petition was based on a complaint first filed by Operation Rescue Senior Policy Advisor Cheryl Sullenger in October, 2006, and amended in February, 2007. Neuhaus could face revocation of her medical license.
“After a long five-year wait, we are guardedly optimistic that justice will finally be done,” said Sullenger. “Neuhaus is a bad doctor who is unfit to practice medicine. This is her third trip to the Board for discipline. This time, the Board should revoke her license since Neuhaus has refused to amend her shoddy practices that have inflicted so much human tragedy and misery on others.”
Sullenger discovered that late-term abortionist George Tiller used only Neuhaus as the legally-mandated second referring physician for all his post-viability abortions, an arrangement that created a symbiotic financial relationship that appeared to violate the law that prohibited legal or financial affiliation between the abortionist and the second concurring physician.
In 2008, Attorney General Paul Morrison agreed and filed 19 criminal charges against Tiller for violating the unaffiliated physician requirement of the Kansas ban on post-viability abortions. Tiller went to trial on those charges in March, 2009, and was acquitted by a jury of six.
However, in a surprising twist, just minutes after the verdict, the KSBHA announced that it had filed an 11-count disciplinary petition against Tiller based on the same allegations at issue in the criminal trial. In a press statement, the KSBHA told the public that the trial’s outcome would not affect the KSBHA’s plans to discipline Tiller since the Board operated under a different burden of proof than criminal courts.
Operation Rescue was convinced that Tiller was preparing for retirement to avoid Board discipline. Tiller associate LeRoy Carhart confirmed at a banquet last year that Tiller had in fact announced his impending retirement to his staff just two weeks before his death in May, 2009.
The Neuhaus petition is based on the same eleven patient files that were the basis for the Tiller disciplinary petition. Patients range in age from 10-18 years old with gestational ages between 25 and 29 weeks. All eleven patients were referred to Tiller for post-viability abortions based on mental health concerns – not physical risks to patients – between July and November, 2003. Some of the evaluations conducted by Neuhaus were done over the phone.
Information about the patients’ abortions was gathered from files produced under subpoena at the request of former Attorney General Phill Kline, who fought a 3-year legal battle with the Kansas Supreme Court over access to the incriminating abortion records. Identities of the women are protected and were never sought.
Dr. Paul McHugh, an expert in psychology at John Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, examined the patient records for Kline and later came forward with his analysis that no patient record contained sufficient information to justify a late-term abortion. (Full interview and transcript.)
Neuhaus came under Board discipline in 1999 and again in 2001 for medical abuses, which included a forced abortion after a woman had withdrawn her consent, shoddy record-keeping, and lack of proper patient care. The KSBHA declared at that time that Neuhaus was a “danger to the public” and limited her ability to practice medicine.
At that time, Neuhaus stopped doing abortions at Central Women’s Services in Wichita, the location that now ironically serves as Operation Rescue’s national headquarters. She closed her Lawrence clinic the following year.
It was following her 2001 discipline, according to testimony in the Tiller criminal case, that former Executive Director Larry Buening, an appointee of former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and close personal friend of Tiller’s, called Tiller and recommended he use Neuhaus to provide his second referrals for late-term abortions because she “needed the money.” Buening promised that if Tiller did this, his problems concerning meeting the law would “go away.” Buening later denied the conversation took place. Buening was forced to resign amid a scandal involving the Board’s ineptitude and unwillingness to discipline.
In the current petition, Neuhaus is accused of the following in each of the eleven counts against her:

• Failure to perform adequate patient interview
• Failure to obtain adequate patient history
• Failure to adequately evaluate the “behavioral or functional impact” of the patient’s condition and symptoms
• Failure to meet the standard of care to the degree of constituting ordinary negligence
• Failure to keep adequate medical records

Operation Rescue plans to attend the disciplinary hearing, which is scheduled to last four days. It will begin Monday at 9:00 AM at the Shawnee County Courthouse located at 200 SE 7th Street, Topeka, Kansas.
Read the KSBHA petition against Neuhaus