NYT, pg1: Grand Juries Become Latest Abortion Battlefield

Grand Juries Become Latest Abortion Battlefield
By MONICA DAVEY
Published: June 17, 2008

WICHITA, Kan. — Opponents of Dr. George Tiller and his clinic here, one of the nation’s few providers of late-term abortions, have tried many ways to stop him over three decades. They have held protests, lobbied lawmakers and complained persistently to state regulators and prosecutors. There have also been several acts of violence, including one in which Dr. Tiller was shot in both arms.

Now his opponents are using a legal tactic that some find startling and others consider inspired. They have turned to an unusual state statute, adopted in 1887, that allows ordinary citizens who gather enough signatures on a petition to demand that a grand jury investigate an alleged crime, a decision usually left to a prosecutor.

Inside a courthouse along Main Street here, 15 grand jurors have been meeting for months, convened under the statute by ordinary Sedgwick County residents to investigate whether Dr. Tiller’s clinic has illegally performed second- and third-trimester abortions. Their deliberations are scheduled to end next month.

Kansas is one of a few states that have laws that allow residents to force a grand jury investigation. Over all, the practice is seldom used, but grand juries by petition in Kansas have recently taken on new life, new targets and a host of new critics who say a law once meant to check official corruption is being twisted into a political weapon.

“This is an abuse of the grand jury system,” said Senator John L. Vratil, a Republican who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee in Topeka. “It’s being used in a political way to further a political cause, and that was never the purpose of the grand jury system in Kansas.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/us/17jury.html?ref=todayspaper

Let's force a grand jury investigation in Kansas into the activities of Bush, Cheney, et al., and the wrongful death of Kansans in the illegal invasion of Iraq.

including one in which Dr. Tiller was shot in both arms."

Dontcha love how these people do shit like this, yet continue to claim the "moral high ground"?
SO life-affirming. :eyes: :puke:

Whack jobs!