"Necessity defense" in Abortion Case Ruled Out
AP Associated Press
December 22, 2009 1:00 pm CST

Wichita, Kan. - A judge ruled Tuesday that Kansas law doesn't allow a so-called "necessity defense" in the trial of a man charged with killing one of the nation's few late-term abortion providers.

The decision was another blow to lawyers for the 51-year-old Scott Roeder, who has confessed to shooting Dr. George Tiller on May 31 and says it was necessary to save "unborn children." Roeder listened intently, at times twiddling his thumbs nervously under the defense table, as the judge gave a lengthy recitation of case precedents that mostly undermined that contention.

In the ruling, Judge Warren Wilber cited a 1993 criminal trespassing case involving an abortion clinic in which the Kansas Supreme Court said that allowing a person's personal beliefs to justify criminal activity to stop law-abiding citizen from exercising his rights would "not only lead to chaos but would be tantamount to sanctioning anarchy."

Judge Wilber further stated that he found it difficult to consider the shooting of Tiller in the back of a church on a Sunday morning, with no overt act by Tiller himself, as an act spurred by an imminent threat of death or bodily harm.