Tiller trial Days 2 and 3 recap
See previous posts, “Tiller trial opens to abortionist fatigue,” and “Tiller trial Day 1 recap.”
Day 2 of the trial of KS abortionist George Tiller, accused of breaking KS law by getting a 2nd opinion for late-term abortions from an abortionist with whom he had financial ties, saw that abortionist, Ann Kristin Neuhaus, retake the stand.
IMO, the most interesting Neuhaus factoid was that she wore the same jacket as the previous day and looked “disheveled,” according to Cheryl Sullenger of Operation Rescue, twittering from inside the courtroom. Tacky.
But maybe Neuhaus is just broke after several medicinal practitioner malfunctions. Despite her protests, prosecutor Barry Disney reminded the court Neuhaus has been disciplined by the KS Board of Healing Arts once for failing to keep proper records of controlled drugs dispensed and another time for failing to provide informed consent, failing to properly monitor aborting patients, and forcibly aborting a mother against her will – for which her license was revoked.
So Neuhaus had her license back but no patients when taking Tiller’s gig to rubber stamp his post-viable abortions.
But enough about Neuhaus. On to Day 3 and Tiller’s testimony. On the stand Tiller appeared zombielike. Perhaps he accidentally lobotomized himself when trying to suction brains out of a half-born baby….
At any rate, while trying to prove Neuhaus didn’t work for him, Tiller slipped twice. According to the Associated Press:
When the prosecutor questioned Tiller on Wednesday about the conversation with Buening, Tiller replied: “When she was working for me — correction, when she was providing consultations for the patient …”
And according to Operation Rescue:
Tiller… discussed how long it took to make arrangements for Neuhaus to begin consulting for him.
“When someone new was going to join your organization, it would take time [to set up],” he said.
As Hugh Grant’s character so well put in the movie, Knotting Hill, “Whoopsy daisy.”
This morning the defense rested, according to OR, and the jury of 6 was sent home while the 2 sides now “hammer out the jury instructions that will be presented… tomorrow after closing arguments.”
One final fact, according to the AP:
Tiller estimated that he performed 250 to 300 late-term abortions in 2003, each costing an average of $6,000.
That’s $1.5 to $1.8 million.
But Tiller’s not doing it for the money. He’s doing it for the mothers and babies… and for his daughters? According to the LAT:
Tiller became emotional as he told the jury why he continues to practice, even though he and his staff have been harassed for years by anti-abortion protesters, one of whom shot him in both arms as he left work in 1993.
” ‘Quit’ is not something I like to do,” Tiller said. He has not closed shop, he said, because his patients need him and he has the “strong support” of his family — including his wife of 45 years, three daughters (two of whom are physicians), a son and 10 grandchildren.
He said that one family conversation crystallized in his mind the importance of his work.
“My daughters came into my study,” he said. “I was reading. And they said, ‘Daddy, if not now, when? If not you, who? Who is going to stand up for women with unexpected and badly damaged babies?’ I had the support of my family, and we were able to proceed ahead.”
Oh, cry me a river… of blood.
[Top photo courtesy of OR; bottom photo courtesy of the LA Times]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
He has, it seems, a sort of “I am a civil rights leader, I am greater than Martin Luther King, Jr.” complex. That irritates me a little. If not me, then who? What is with his self-serving attitude that he is a martyr for a liberating cause. Tiller, it strikes me, is rather of the belief that he is a great and glorious leader on behalf of human dignity…but would his purposes not be better served in helping children who are ill, in helping by providing healthcare for them that, should they die, they die in dignity with proper medical care?
So they allowed the drama testimony where he is a victum of attacks, violence, marches and harrassment. Like they re frame it. PP claims to be the advocate of women’s health and is always looking for advocates.
If he is so hot, good docs would help him and the women. I would like to see him punished like a sex offender.
But wheres the money in that Vannah?
“My daughters came into my study,” he said. “I was reading. And they said, ‘Daddy, if not now, when? If not you, who? Who is going to stand up for women with unexpected and badly damaged babies?’
Pro-lifers that’s who. These “badly damaged” babies have just as much right to life as anyone, and if they are to die in utero, let them die in peace and with dignity.
How does he explain to his daughter why HE has “bady damaged” babies to death? The healthy babies he aborts were just fine until he “badly damaged” them by tearing them to piece, or stopping their beating hearts, or suctions their brains out.
I guess he forgot to let his daughter in on that dirty little secret. How can any woman stomach what he does and sleep in the same bed with this creep. What kind of a freak is his wife? Ish Ish Ish.
Precisely, Oliver.
6 grand for doing a few hours “work” of killing a late term baby is SO MUCH more profitable than any kind of long term care for any other baby.
Anyone who believes for a minute that money is NOT the driving factor for this monster is deluding themselves.
Wow. Count VI (p 11) of the Neuhaus license revocation petition leaves me speechless.
6 grand for a few hours work? She is there more than a few hours but he does the work in 30 minutes. Abortion sucks and a late term dead one comes out in large chunks. The irrational defense can’t explain how the Dr. Rubber Stamp did consults less than a full day each week and the consults got completed the other days.
“Who is going to stand up for women with unexpected and badly damaged babies?”
===========================================
hmmm…standing up for these women, in the Tiller’s family dictionary means killing their own babies, their own flesh and blood???
Dang! I can just hear the little children say “Daddy when I grow up, I want to be just like you…”
Gives me shivers just thinking about it.
This is the ugliest part of America on full display for the whole world to see. It’s very hard to watch without throwing up.
I just read that two of his daughters are also doctors. Does this mean they’ll be following in the family business?
From my viewpoint as a counselor, Tlller hired her and knew how much he needed her to get a second legal opinion. He did his best to seek counsel and make it have the appearance of an armslength non related engagement. Since she covered none of the overhead, none of the expenses and they dribbled a little copy paper through the case, it looks like she was not independent. Actually the testimony by the defense council was rehearsed and rehearsed some more. She only worked there. Only when the staff was there
Only location
No other office
No staff of her own as required by her orders after she got in trouble
No equipment of her own.
No separate expenses
Actually she didn’t even do billing or appointments.
Tiller collected cash and should have done tax with holding.
The more I think of it, I suspect she also did some actual abortions and even tho it is not illegal for her to do so, she was not in any way meeting the intent of independent.
What it’s all gonna hinge on is how the jurors view the legal gymnastics — as figuring out a way to COMPLY WITH the law, or as figuring out a way to EVADE it?
All we need is one juror to insist that all the legal consults were a sign that he wanted to “comply” to tank the prosecution.
Perhaps Tiller should be talking to Mr. Feldkamp?
xppc
IS ‘xppc’ an acroymn for ex-planned parenthood counselor?
yor bro ken
If you could sit down and have a candid conversation with mr. tiller and he was open and honest you would discover in short order how much he dislikes the pregnant women who’s situations require him to do what he does.
The money does not salve his soul and he must confront the reality of what he does every time he does it. It damages him. It angers him.
He makes himself a martyr to mask his disgust with himself and with his victims.
Tiller is a mass murderer, serial killer, sociopath, schizophrenic psychopath.
Killing humans always damages the killer even when the killing is legally and morally justifiable.
Why do you think law enforcement officers are required to submit to counseling after they have used deadly force that was ‘righeous’?
It is not in our human make up to casually kill people even in war. We have to be conditioned to do so. But even then the act damages us emotionally and spiritually.
Tiller is no exception. Neither are the women who submit to him for his ‘services’.
yor bro ken
On live now. They are getting ready for jury instructions. They are defining financial affiliation. The defense objects and is claiming entrapment. Tiller team is trying to insert their own definition of financial connection. Closing arguments coming. 19 criminal counts. It will take a long time.Monnat is already talking appeal.
Judges order to jury. Finding must show “intentional affiliation” of a financial nature. affiliation between two docs. That rules out accidential or untintentional affiliation.
tiller didn’t accidentally stumble accross this other doc among any number of other docs and it just so happeneded she had an opinion that agreed with his.
The other issue is “irreversible damage” means it can’t heal.
They are raising a defense of entrapment.