Strollerderby : Kansas

UPDATE: President Obama Issues Statement About Dr. George Tiller

Brett Singer — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 02:36:00 GMT

President Barack Obama has issued a statement about the murder of Dr. George Tiller:

I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.

Well said, Mr. President.

TheRoot.com points out: "It's fairly unusual for the White House to comment on this type of local story. But the news of Tiller's murder, allegedly by an anti-choice activist apprehended this afternoon by local and state police, has reverberated across the country in a matter of hours—and inflamed a longstanding debate about abortion rights in America."

Methinks this won't be the last we hear about the matter.

Original post follows:

*-*-*-*

Sad news from Kansas -- Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed while ushering at church. A suspect is in custody.

From Huffington Post:

WICHITA, Kansas -- Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas doctor whose clinic received national attention for performing late-term abortions, was shot to death as he entered his Wichita church on Sunday.
Tiller has been among the few U.S. physicians performing late-term abortion, making him a favored target of anti-abortion protesters. He testified that he and his family have suffered years of harassment and threats. His clinic was the site of the 1991 "Summer of Mercy" protests marked by mass demonstrations and arrests. His clinic was bombed in 1985, and an abortion opponent shot him in both arms in 1993.

Anti-abortion group Operation Rescue was no fan of Dr. Tiller; there is a "Tiller Watch" page on their web site. The group has issued a statement condemning the murder.

Tiller was recently tried for "allegedly consulting a second physician in late-term abortion cases who was not truly 'independent' as required by Kansas state law." It was a big deal case (we covered it on Strollerdery), with both sides tossing out big deal rhetoric. "Columnist Jack Cashill compared the trial to the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals, while NYU Professor Jacob Appel described Tiller as 'a genuine hero who ranks alongside Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. in the pantheon of defenders of human liberty.'" (Source for both quotes: Wikipedia)

This is an ugly end to an ugly story. Hopefully the police have the right person and they will be punished. That won't bring anyone back to life, of course. No matter what side of the abortion debate you are on, I hope you agree that shooting someone in cold blood is a horrible thing to do.

Source: Huffington Post

Image: CrooksAndLiars

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Late-Term Abortion Provider on Trial in Kansas

Kate Tuttle — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:01:00 GMT

Let's get this out of the way first off: I'm from Kansas. Not everyone from my home state is narrow-minded or politically conservative. Even those who are conservative tend toward the "live and let live" ethos so absent from much of the far-right fundamentalist playbook. This may explain why it's taken three decades for George Tiller, MD, to find himself on trial, defending his vocation as the abortion provider of last resort.

Tiller's Wichita clinic, one of the few places in the country where a woman can get a second-trimester abortion, is by all accounts a haven for those who need to be there. Nobody wants to be there (it seems ridiculous to have to point this out, but I think it's necessary). Many if not most of his patients are having an abortion so late because they have only recently discovered that the fetus they're carrying is afflicted with grevious birth defects. Women do not get a late-term abortion because they're frivolous, or heartless -- their hearts are only too broken by the situation they find themselves in. This is the point at which terms like "pro-life" and "pro-choice" start to mean less and less, and real life becomes as complicated as it's possible to be. Even though it's vanishingly rare, late-term abortion is the flash point where politics and pain ignite. This is why there's a whole section called "Kansas stories" on a website devoted to women facing difficult choices after devastating test results. It's why volunteers walk patients through the gauntlet of protestors, mostly organized by the Wichita-based Operation Rescue, which refers to everyone born after 1973 (the year of Roe v. Wade) as a "survivor." It's why Dr. Tiller has been shot for doing his job, and why he came back the next day to work anyway.

Now Tiller's on trial, charged with violating a Kansas state law mandating that any abortion slated to be performed after fetal viability (defined as 22 weeks gestation) undergo a second opinion phase by a doctor not legally or financially tied to the doctor performing the abortion. At issue in this trial is whether the relationship between Tiller and another physician, Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus, crossed that line. It's a case that's been brewing for years now, initiated by a rabid anti-abortion state attorney general who was since defeated by the kind of Kansas voters who, even though they might call themselves pro-life, realistically figure that life happens and they are not in the business of playing God. The new AG, a guy I went to high school with, is a moderate Democrat, pro-choice in this issue, who had no choice but to continue to proscute Tiller under the indictment (and law) he inherited.

There are no winners here. One of the patients seen by Drs. Neuhaus and Tiller and given an abortion by Tiller was ten years old at the time. As fetal viability moves one way on the scale (it wasn't long ago that babies born before 28 weeks almost never lived), genetic testing gets better but moves more slowly. A woman having an amniocentesis at 20 weeks will find out at 21 weeks that the baby she's grown to love will live a brief life of unendurable pain and no hope of cognitive function; her choice is awful any way you cut it. At clinics like Dr. Tiller's she's given the chance to perform a humane and awful duty, a mother's unendurably painful act of love and letting go. I hate that his clinic has to exist -- I wish all babies were wanted and healthy -- but I'd fight like hell to keep a bunch of righteous idealogues from taking it away.

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Oops! Student Finds Mistake on Standardized Test

KeriF — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:32:00 GMT

You would think that a standardized test put together by a committee of 30 state teachers and tested in 50 high schools would be pretty accurate.

Well, you'd be wrong.

Geoffrey Stanford, a 17-year-old junior at Wichita East High School, spotted an error after the test had been in use for almost a year.

The mistake? In a section about greenhouse gases, the word "omission" was used in place of the word "emission."

Karla Denny, spokeswoman for the Education Department of Kansas, said, "You hate for that sort of thing to happen, but it happens.

"We're human."

We've all been guilty of relying a little too heavily on spellcheck to edit our work, but this is a standardized test. It has to be perfect. If the questions don't make sense, how effective can the test be?

Stanford describes himself as "a stickler for grammar and vocabulary and the correct use of words."

It's nice to know that even if the Kansas Education Department can't be bothered to thoroughly read their standardized tests, at least one of their students can.

"It annoys me when I see mistakes," Stanford said.

Probably not as much as it annoys the Kansas Education Department.

"Dads" Want DNA Testing in Kansas

JeanneSager — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:28:00 GMT

Christopher Sprowson's ex-wife had an affair that resulted in a baby. Now the State of Kansas wants him to pay for a child genetic testing proves isn't his because he's the "presumed father."

A bit presumptuous, aren't they?

Sprowson and his first wife divorced when the child, now thirteen, was just a baby. He's never had a relationship with the child, nor has the mother called for one. Why should she? He isn't the boy's father.

Kansas officials stepped in when the ex-wife filed for welfare.The state automatically seeks child support for any parent receiving public assistance to reduce the state's burden. Unable to provide a name for a father of her boy, the state put the blame on Sprowson. When DNA proved otherwise, a judge said it didn't matter – as her husband at the time of the baby's birth, he had to pay some $10,000.

But Sprowson and wife Karey have three kids of their own to support, and they have made a bid to the state legislature to change the laws, allowing men to use DNA evidence to prove once and for all that they aren't responsible for kids with whom they share no blood relation.

Critics have said this will pave the way for stepfathers everywhere to shirk their responsiblities to their stepkids. The way I see it, stepkids are just that - "step" kids. Short of a marriage to the child's biological parent, they aren't that child's parent. So why should they be responsible for their care outside of the marriage? Their argument is the old standby - it takes more than biology to make a parent, and I agree with them. But that's a saying used to describe the non-biological parents who nurture children, not one that can be supplied to defend thrusting someone else's responsibilities on men like Christopher Sprowson. He never nurtured the child because he had no reason to - he wasn't the boy's father in any sense of the word, biological or emotional.

I don't fault the state for trying to reduce a burden on taxpayers by requiring non-custodial parents to step in to care for a child rather than the state. But you can't legislate family ties into existence anymore than you can force an angry spouse to accept their cheating partner's love child into their heart.

Give the guys their DNA test, Kansas. And let the real fathers stand up.

Image: NIH

More News About Missing Child Adam Herrman

Brett Singer — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:15:00 GMT

Jeanne first told us about the bizarre case of the little boy who has been missing since 1999, but the story gets even stranger with some new details.

Let's start with this one: it turns out that the person who tipped off police about Adam's decade-old disappearance may have been the daughter of his adoptive parents. To clarify: Crystal Herrman, the biological daughter of Doug and Valerie Herrman, may have called the police and told them that Adam, whom Doug and Valerie adopted, was missing. Crystal emailed KSN.com, the Kansas NBC TV affiliate, saying the following:

"We started this, which was hard against our own parents as we were not adopted. But we want more than anything to find the truth, answers and justice…We pray every day our parents will come forward. Do the right thing not only for what they already put Adam through in the past, but to make it right for him now."

KSN says that that last sentence implies that Adam was being abused, although it doesn't appear to explicitly state that fact.

There's more: a woman described as "a former relative, who says she remains close to one of Valerie Herrman's sisters," told KSN that Valerie recently said, "They can dig up the whole state of Kansas, they'll never find a body." The Herrmann's attorney says that his clients are "worried" that they face murder charges, pointing out that there is no evidence of such a crime. He calls the Herrmans "good people," and claims the couple had no part in Adam's disappearance. The attorney has appeared on the Today Show, and also on local station KSN, stating that the Herrmans thought that Adam had gone to live with his biological father when he didn't come home after some time. Why they didn't call Adam's biological father and find out is a question that seems not to have been asked.

Lastly, Adam's biological father, Irvin Groeninger, gave an interview to KSN. He says that he "lost" Adam once and can't lose him again, and just wants to know what happened. Here's video of the interview, which also has clips of the attorney.

It's nasty stuff. I suppose I'll say that I hope they find out what happened soon, since it doesn't seem likely that this story has a happy ending.

Source: KSN.com

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Parents Wait a Decade to Report Missing Child

JeanneSager — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:24:00 GMT

A child went missing in 1999, and his parents say they feel "very guilty" they didn't report him missing sooner. You know, sooner than the other day . . . ten years after the tween boy went missing.

Well, you know, feel guilty, act guilty . . . At the very least, these people must be guilty of being bad parents.

Adam Herrman disappeared from his adoptive parents, Doug and Valerie Herrman's trailer park in the town of Towanda, Kansas, in 1999. A foster child placed in the the Herrmans' care when he was two, Adam (born Irvin Groeninger III) was adopted by them. By the time he was eleven or twelve (somehow, police haven't been able to pin down an exact age - making me wonder if there's an exact day he was last seen), the Herrmans say he was running away frequently.

But when he up and disappeared again, they apparently decided he was with his biological parents . . . or homeless.

And still, they didn't report him missing.

According to a CNN report, a "person" made a report to the Sedgwick County Exploited and Missing Children's Unit that they were concerned about Adam Herrman. Police have since executed a search warrant at the family home, taking into possession their computer. They have gotten an answer, they said, to one of reporters' main questions . . . but they won't reveal which one.

Apparently it's not "what happened to Adam Herrman," because police said they don't know whether he's alive or dead. The Herrmans are not under arrest at this point, but their lawyer has said they "feel very guilty" and "rue" the fact that they didn't report him missing.

Of course, I can't help thinking of another missing Adam. Adam Walsh's parents went running to the cops because they loved their son and wanted them back, and their son is forever memorialized in the "Code Adam" alert for a missing child. Why wouldn't a set of parents (even those frustrated by a troubled runaway child) put out their own Code Adam for their Adam?

Usually, I try to stay away from the words "adoptive parents" because once an adoption is final, the adopting parents are simply parents in my book. But two people who let their pre-teen son go missing without reporting it to police? I'm not sure I can call them parents.

Image: CNN

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Students Make Rev. Phelps Followers Run Away

Kelly Mills — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:35:00 GMT

Feel-good story? Members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, gathered a small protest near Omaha Central High School. The church is led by the Reverend Fred Phelps, and I'm sure you know who these folks are. They became famous when they protested at the funeral of Matthew Shepard, and have gone on to protest everywhere it would horrify you to see picketers, including the funerals of slain service members. You know, the "God Hates Fags" people. (Biting tongue now...)

However, when the group held up anti-homosexuality and anti-Obama signs near the high school last Friday, they were met by hundreds of student counter-protesters. The students chanted "Diversity" and "Gay is OK" and even busted out the Pledge of Allegiance. And, well, the kids got a little riled up, and they threw hamburgers and lemonade bottles and milk at the Westboro protesters. Ahem. Maybe I'm supposed to feel bad about the sort of violent reaction, but I really don't.

The police then advised the Phelps folks that the situation was getting a little out of hand and they might want to leave for their own personal safety. And so they did, ahem. So far no students have been disciplined, and the school spokeswoman said, "This hate group came to Central High at dismissal to provoke students... To some extent, we need to understand that these are young people, and we have to take into consideration this kind of extreme provocation." Totally. I'm with you, lady.

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Scary Teen Kidnappers Going to Jail

Amy Kuras — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 18:19:00 GMT

This story is fairly chilling, but has a happy ending. An 18-year old woman who, with a friend, kidnapped another pregnant teen with the intention of cutting her baby out of her womb in a suburban Kansas city motel was sentenced to eight years in prison earlier this year. Police said Lauren Gash had allegedly told people she was pregnant and even set up a registry. Her co-defendant, Alisa Betts, pled guilty last week to a charge of kidnapping and first-degree assault.

Betts and Gash allegedly contacted Amanda Howard through a MySpace ad for baby items, and promised to pick her up at her home in Clinton, Mo., drive her to Kansas City to collect some baby clothes, and then take her back. Instead they pepper-sprayed her and took her to the motel in Blue Springs, where they bound her with duct tape and were about to begin slicing her open with a craft knife when police burst in – tipped off by Betts, who got cold feet.

Yeee-ikes. Howard is apparently doing well after her traumatic experience, as is her baby son.

Another scary case happened in Kansas three years prior, when someone kidnapped a woman and actually did cut the baby out of her womb, killing the mother. Is there something that breeds baby-stealing psychos in the water out there? The only person I know from Kansas is very nice and not at all psychotic. And what the hell makes an 18-year old so insanely desirous of some else’s baby?

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Amy S.F. Lutz — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:35:00 GMT

Here's a role reversal for you: students at a Shawnee, Kansas school are protesting because alcohol will be served to parents at a PTA fundraiser.

The students, from Prairie Ridge Elementary School, feel that by drinking at a school-sponsored event, their parents would be sending the wrong message about drinking and driving. They firmly deny critics' claims that their righteous objections are motivated purely by fear that the adults will get toasted and tell embarrassing stories about them, like how they used to run around naked.

The PTA had no comment, but I'm guessing if they did, it would be something like, "This is Kansas! What else is there to do?" *

*Note to our Kansas readers: No, it never gets old. Sorry.

Is Workplace Parenting The Wave Of The Future?

Amy S.F. Lutz — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 13:32:00 GMT

It's been a while since I worked in an office. It hasn't been long at all, however, since I've had young babies around (call it 'ongoing'). And based on my experience trying to write and think with those babies crawling all over me, I find it hard to believe that infants in the workplace wouldn't be . . . distracting, to say the least.

But Carla Moquin doesn't agree. As founder of the Parenting in the Workplace Institute, she's compiled a database of over 70 companies that permit employees to bring babies to work, and she suspects many more allow it even if it's not officially recognized. Although there are obviously some professions less baby-friendly than others (i.e., doctors or teachers), a 2005 study found that babies have virtually no effect on productivity. In fact, babies can actually vitalize the work environment and lead to higher morale among co-workers.

I'm still having a tough time imagining how my kids, none of whom would spend more than ten minutes in the exersaucer, would have fared in an office. Maybe this arrangement works best with those mythical babies I've heard of but never actually encountered - the ones that spend hours contemplating life from the confines of their infant car seats, or sleeping in papooses strapped to their mothers' backs. After all, it worked for Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius, who took both her sons to work when they were babies. Now over 20 state agencies in Kansas allow workplace parenting. And as we all know, where goes Kansas, so goes the rest of the country.

Kansas Senior Citizen Pays For Community Pool With Recyclables

Patti — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 13:34:00 GMT

If there is a single example of how it takes a village to raise a child, Maisie Devore embodies it. The octogenarian decided that her hometown of Eskridge, Kansas needed a pool for the children of the community, and set out to make it happen. She drove around in her truck for over thirty years collecting cans, which she redeemed at the recycling center, and every penny went toward the eventual construction of what came to be dedicated as Maisie's Pool in 2001. She's still out there gathering trash to help pay for the pool's maintenance, but you can help ease her burden by visiting maisiespool.com and contributing. In a world of rising childhood obesity, poor health, and diminishing funds available for community recreational programs, Maisie Devore is a true hero. See the YouTube video of Maisie's story below.

Kansas Bill Would Fine Parents Who Leave Kids in Cars

Karen Murphy — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 13:12:00 GMT

Kansas is mulling over a bill which would allow police officers to assess a $25 fine to parents of children left alone in cars, unless the children are over eight years old or are supervised by another child of at least 12. The fine is being proposed as an alternative to the current choices a Kansas police officer has when confronted with a child left in a car: that of "scolding" the parent upon their return, or taking the child into custody and charging the parent with reckless endangerment of the child. Subsequent offenses would result in a much larger fine.

Although I tend to be one to decry over-legislation, I understand the concern here of preventing deaths from exposure to heat in a closed car. Two Kansas children have died in this way in the past 9 years. The fine seems a middle-ground alternative to the option of charging a parent for something my parents did without thought or needful concern when I was growing up, in a time when it was a lot more "okay" than it is now.

Kansas May Extend Child Support to Age 23

Karen Murphy — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 12:51:00 GMT

The new Kansas state motto: "Don't Be a Divorced Dad Unless You're a Millionaire". Oh. That's probably too long to fit on a license plate, isn't it?

Actually, I jest. I think Kansas' new proposed bill to extend the age of children receiving child support is a step in the right direction. The bill would require a parent to pay child support until the kids are 23 if they go to college. No college? Then the buck stops at 18, like usual. Still, this gives custodial parents a much-needed leg up just when they need it most, when the kid goes off to college and starts incurring those $30,000 annual tuition bills. And it's a nice incentive to get kids to go to college.

Strollerderby : Kansas

UPDATE: President Obama Issues Statement About Dr. George Tiller

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