Anti-Choice Legislator = Anti-Choice Judge??????

That foul stench Wichitans awoke to this morning was the death of impartiality and justice for Dr. George Tiller.

Judge Tony Powell, the very judge assigned by Criminal Court Judge Greg Waller, to rule over the bogus law Dr. Tiller is now being charged with violating, wrote the law in 1998 when he was a Kansas State legislator! Talk about a kangaroo court!

Have the anti-abortion people risen up and declared this would be unfair to Dr. Tiller's case the same way they screamed and rolled around on the sidewalk in front of the Wichita Eagle about Nola Foulston and Attorney General Morrison as being bias in determining the law? That would be a big NO. High standards of conduct and impartiality of the law are expected of the other side, not of the anti-abortion camp.

The anti-abortion camp believes they do not have to follow the law the way ordinary mortals like Dr. Tiller are required to do but they can use the law to manipulate and harass people in order to achieve their ends.

The perfect storm has finally formed over Kansas: the anti-abortion proponents were able to slide their boys and girls into the Kansas State legislature and craft the most offensive, restrictive laws against a woman's access to reproductive choices in the state. The next step was to take over the judges of the land who were to determine the constitutionality of those bogus laws. They finally have a former representative in place who can serve like the biblical judges of the Old Testament to rule "impartially" against Dr. Tiller. God Bless America!

In Kansas, it is as if Roe v. Wade never existed under the law. What Supreme Court Justice Blackmun crafted so carefully and thoughtfully in 1973 has been nit-picked, stabbed and pulled more times than taffy so that today Roe is barely recognizable through the piles of state laws intentionally written to make reproductive choice rare and difficult.

Roe did not stipulate the cumbersome and foolish requirement that a doctor who performs late term abortions must have another doctor sign off on that abortion and better not have any connections to the other doctor such as breathing the same air.

Now, via Attorney General Morrison's attempt to follow "the letter of the bad laws" cooked up by former anti-abortion legislator Tony Powell-Dr. Tiller is in "violation" of said law. (Of course, lawyers and law makers do not seem too concerned about following the letter of the law when it comes to Roe.)

The rotting of justice and the killing of Roe can't be masked by the odor of leather chairs and polished furniture in a courtroom in Wichita. Dr Tiller better have good lawyers because the law has been written to sink him.

Vickie Sandell Stangl