O’ Reilly claimed on-air to have seen the records and reported the Doc terminates near term pregnancies for depression and for 10 year olds.
Did Kansas Atty Gen break any laws by letting Bill O’Reilly look at redacted abortion records?
Attorney General Phill “Kline, one of the nation’s foremost abortion opponents, has said the targets of his investigation are rapists, sex offenders with child victims, and doctors involved in illegal abortions. Those could include doctors performing illegal late-term abortions or those failing to report abuse of a child.”
O’ Reilly claimed on-air to have seen the records and reported the Doc terminates near term pregnancies for depression.
I’m not sure how records with personal information removed will allow the AG to file charges on anyone.
Why has the AG kept these records for 2 years?
Is either man targeting this particular Doctor in an attempt to run him out of business?
Is there any evidence that the AG showed O’Reilly those records? I understand that the AG has records and that O’Reilly claims to have seen some records but that doesn’t mean the two are connected.
To my knowledge, all medical records are protected under HIPAA.
Which means that without the permission of the patient, no one may look at that patient’s medical records. PERIOD! The hospital spends a great deal of time pounding that into our heads on a daily basis.
So we have two possibilities:
Bill O’Reilly is a lying sack of reactionary crap (no big surprise), or
The Kansas AG (or whoever gave the records to O’Reilly) has committed a very serious federal offense.
I’m sure the Dept. of Health and Human Services would be very interested in which one it is.
If anyone showed O’Reilly medical records, it’s a crime but O’Reilly’s claims don’t ring true to me. Why would there be records of illegal abortions and how could a doctor get away with performing them?
I call bullshit on O’Reilly. I think he’s either making up part or all of his allegations. He does that. They don’t call him “O-lie-ly” for nothing.
Why are the abortions illegal? That may be the claim, but late term abortions can be performed to protect the health of the mother (the Supreme Court may change this). Depression is a health issue.
I don’t know why they’d be illegal unless they’re third trimester and even then, I’m not sure. He keeps using the meaningless phrasee “late term” abortion which is used by pro-lifers to refer to anything after the first trimester. It’s a bit of cheap demagoguery intended to deceive people into thinking they’re talking about third tri abortions when they’re really only talking about second (third tri abortions are extremely rare, a fraction of 1% of all abortions, are illegal in many states and are usually only performed for urgent medical reasons – often after the fetus has already died). I’m not taking Billo’s word for anything, that’s for sure.
The current Supreme Court case won’t affect this guy, by the way. The so-called “partial-birth” abortion ban does not actually ban all 2nd trimester abortion, it only bans one particular procedure for performing them…the safest one. According to Bill O’Reilly (who is decidedly NOT a trustworthy source), this guy uses an alternative procedure to an intact D&X (“partial-birth”), so the SCOTUS decision will be irrelevant to his practice anyway.
On a Bill Oreilly sucks website they say that Oreilly claims to have gotten a leak about the information. Which is not the same thing as looking at someone’s medical record. So I don’t know exactly the legality of leaking the information if you remove the actual patient information. So to the best of my knowledge this wouldn’t be illegal, because the Attn Gen already fought the courts for the right to look at these records and won. Though I must say this is still something done in very poor taste.
Much as I’d like to see Kine get his ass handed to him for any number of reasons, I don’t believe for a moment that he showed O’Reilly medical records.
I think Bill was talking out of his ass, and any investigation will show that.
Some observations from a Kansan whose seen Phill Kline in action the past few years:
Kline says nobody passed information to O’Reilly. My first thought was Bill-O was lying through his arse to look like he was “in the know.” Reality is anyone’s guess. I think I read something that said it would have been illegal for the Kansas AG office to leak such info. George Tiller has asked the Kansas Supreme Court to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the matter. A spokesman for Kline said, “I assumed he (BoR) was talking about somebody on the inside of the abortion clinics.” :rolleyes:
Kline’s basic reasoning for getting juvenile abortion records was: we have a statutory rape law, so anyone under 16 having an abortion could well have been the victim of a crime. He had to fight through the courts to get those records, and won. Tiller and the other provider involved are also asking the Kansas Supremes to seal the records and stay Kline’s investigation.
Some pro-lifers are saying folks like Tiller are diagnosing depression in order to have a “medical excuse” to perform late-term abortions (Tiller is one of the few doctors who will do late-term abortions).
Tiller has long been a target of abortion protestors. Some may remember the long “Summer of Mercy” protest Operation Rescue staged in Wichita ten or fifteen years back. Shortly after that, some gal took a shot at Tiller (hit him in the arm IIRC). And in today’s paper I see Operation Rescue will be going after Tiller again on the next Roe v Wade anniversary.
As Governor Quinn noted, Kline was soundly defeated Tuesday by his Democratic opponant (for reference, the races for “obscure” state offices indicates Kansas has 65/35 Republican/Democrat split).
(In related Kansas electoral news, the state school board incumbants who had supported the Intelligent Design thing were voted out in the August primary, so we will see changes there. We aren’t in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.)
Said opponent also changed parties just so that he could run against Kline. So Kline lost to a flip flopper. Big time.
Side note: I know people who ran against Kline in the past, and he’s just as smarmy and slimy as anyone might expect. But I still don’t think that he showed records to O’Reilly. While he’s a scumbag, he’s not stupid.
My suspicion: The information that was passed to Bill-O (by whoever) were NOT real “medical records” as we normally think of them, but rather statistics, along the lines of: “July 2005: 2 minors, one 12, one 14; 4 adults, 1 with diagnosis of depression”, period. And Mr. Smirk, of course, just puffs himself up and says he “had seen medical records” just the same way he said he “had seen combat”…
Several moderate Republicans in Kansas have recently switched parties at the urging of Gov. Sebelius. I don’t know if this can fairly described as “flip-flopping.”
What is the source of this story? Anything other than The O’Reilly Factor? Is there a link to a text version?
Who is this “Doc”? Is it one particular person or several? In either case, why is/are the name(s) kept secret – is he/are they the target(s) of an ongoing investigation?
Can a 10-year-old girl actually get pregnant?*
I should hope anyone here who accepts abortion but has a problem with late-term abortion would make an exception in such a case!
If she’s gotten her period, yes. Girls as young as 8 and 9 have been known to menstruate. And today, with young girls going through puberty earlier and earlier, it’s not impossible.
Can’t say for certain, bu t I imagine that it’s George Tiller. Wichita doc who does perform late-term abortions. Operation Rescue has a serious hard on for him. As, for that matter, does Phill.
