Grand jury can’t get abortion files

The Kansas Supreme Court temporarily blocked a grand jury Tuesday from obtaining patient records from a physician who is one of the nation’s few providers of late-term abortions.

The grand jury is investigating whether Dr. George Tiller has broken Kansas laws restricting abortion, as many abortion opponents allege. The grand jury subpoenaed the medical files of about 2,000 women, including some who decided against having abortions.

Abortion opponents forced Sedgwick County to convene the grand jury by submitting petitions, the second such citizen investigation of Tiller, who has long been a focus of the nation’s abortion battle. His clinic was bombed in 1985, and eight years later a woman shot him in both arms.

Tiller’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to quash the grand jury’s subpoenas, and the court agreed to block their enforcement until it considered the issue.

Chief Justice Kay McFarland said Tiller’s challenge raised “significant issues” about patients’ privacy and a grand jury’s power to subpoena records.

The Sedgwick County prosecutor presenting evidence to the grand jury had objected to the attempts to block the subpoenas, noting that the grand jury’s term was limited, but McFarland said its term could be extended.

The court set a Feb. 11 deadline for the county’s chief judge and the retired judge presiding over the grand jury to file objections to the court’s action. Those judges then have until Feb. 25 to file a response to Tiller’s legal challenge.

Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, a large antiabortion group, called the high court’s decision “extremely disappointing.”

“There is no way to determine if the reasons for these late abortions were done within the narrow legal criteria without looking at the records themselves,” she said. “His lawyers say they are worried about women’s privacy. They are worried about protecting Dr. Tiller.”

“We are pleased,” said Lee Thompson, a lawyer representing Tiller. “The Supreme Court has recognized very significant issues regarding privacy protection are at stake and is willing to give us more time to assess that.”

Meanwhile, the Center for Reproductive Rights of New York filed a petition on behalf of the patients with the Kansas Supreme Court on Tuesday, seeking to have the subpoenas quashed.

“It is a parallel action, which I assume the court will consider together,” said Bonnie Scott Jones, the center’s senior attorney. “The patients have a strong interest at stake. It is their privacy that will be violated if these records are released.”

The grand jury is seeking records of all women who visited Tiller’s clinic between July 2003 and last month and were at least 22 weeks pregnant at the time. The grand jury also subpoenaed information about current and former employees and referring physicians.

The edited patient records would not have the women’s names, but they would have patient identification numbers. Tiller’s lawyers claimed in court last week that in an earlier investigation, former Atty. Gen. Phill Kline was able to track down patients’ names using the identifying numbers on patients’ files.

A spokesman for Kline, who is now Johnson County district attorney, denied that any patients had ever been identified.

Kline eventually filed 30 misdemeanor charges against Tiller before leaving office last year, only to see the case dismissed for jurisdictional reasons.