A Kansas doctor testified Thursday in a disciplinary hearing that she omitted some details from her medical records for late-term abortion patients because she wanted to protect their privacy.
Ann Kristin Neuhaus said she feared abortion opponents might obtain the information and make it public.
Read more from Associated Press on KansasCity.com.
Keeping minimal or skeletal written notes is not uncommon, particularly when it comes to mental health records that could stigmatize people or harm them. Given Kansas’s history of intrusiveness into what should have been confidential records between doctor and patient, I’m not surprised that a practitioner would keep minimal notes.
It would be a shame if this doctor lost her license for trying to protect the patients who sought her opinion. The bigger shame, of course, is what the state is doing to women by riding roughshod over their autonomy and rights to make medical decisions for themselves.
I grew up in the generation where women who needed or elected to have an abortion had to go to back-alley practitioners or use wire clothes hangers. If they could afford it, some left the country for Cuba or other places to obtain the procedure. That states have enacted laws that will send women back into such dark ages is despicable.
Some of us fought for women’s rights so that our daughters and granddaughters would not have to. Sadly, it seems they will have to fight the battles that should have been settled 40 years ago.