Kansas wingnuts

The wingnuts in Kansas want to get into your doctor's files to find out what you're doing. It's the chastity police at it again:

One of the nation's few late-term abortion doctors was ordered Wednesday to turn over about 2,000 patient medical records to a Kansas grand jury investigating his practice.

Abortion opponents hope that the records will lead to further criminal charges against Dr. George Tiller, who already is facing 19 misdemeanor counts stemming from late-second and third-trimester abortions at his clinic in Wichita.

Tiller's lawyers say he scrupulously follows the law. They plan to ask the Kansas Supreme Court to overturn a state district court judge's ruling that Tiller begin handing over files as early as today.

"It's an unprecedented encroachment upon a woman's right to privacy," attorney Dan Monnat said.

Monnat was joined in court by a lawyer from the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, who filed affidavits from three patients demanding that their medical records remain private.

Even though the judge ordered names and addresses removed from the files, the patients said they feared their identities could be deduced from details about their families and medical histories. The antiabortion group Operation Rescue has given the grand jury several photos that it says show pregnant women entering Tiller's clinic; the same pictures are posted online, with the women's faces blurred.

"Even thinking about the possibility of anti-choice extremists identifying me has caused my partner and I great distress," one woman wrote.

Meanwhile, let's cut off money for health care for the poor and elderly. We don't care if they die after their born. Then, it's their own fault. We just have to prevent them from dieing before they're born.

WASHINGTON — In his new budget, to be unveiled Monday, President Bush will call for large cuts in the growth of Medicare, far exceeding what he proposed last year, and he will again seek major savings in Medicaid, according to administration officials and budget documents.