The Associated Press

WICHITA, Kan. — Shouldn’t Troy Newman have been excited and happy — and not low-key — about what happened in Sedgwick County District Court?

Newman, president of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, had questioned whether the judge who seemed destined to handle the criminal case against Dr. George Tiller could be impartial. The judge had received contributions in past campaigns from attorneys linked with the high-profile abortion provider.

But on Friday that judge, the county’s chief criminal judge, assigned the case to Judge Anthony Powell. As a legislator, Powell had once called abortion “the slaughter of the innocents” and publicly denounced Tiller as a law breaker.

So why did Newman describe himself as cautious about the future?

Like other abortion opponents, he doesn’t trust Attorney General Paul Morrison, whose office is prosecuting Tiller on 19 misdemeanors. Morrison is an abortion rights Democrat, and his case against the doctor strikes anti-abortion groups as less aggressive than it could be.

Many abortion foes remain in mourning for a case filed against Tiller by the man Morrison ousted from the attorney general’s office, Phill Kline, an anti-abortion Republican. Kline’s case, 30 misdemeanor charges, died in December, and its ghost remains noisy in the legal and political debate over Tiller’s activities.

“I’m not certain that the attorney general is doing everything within his power to prosecute the case,” Newman said of Morrison. “I think these are the weakest charges that could have been brought.”

Such talk frustrates Morrison and his assistants. Both he and Kline alleged Tiller violated a 1998 law restricting late-term abortions. Tiller’s attorneys say he’s always complied with the law.

Convictions on all counts in either case likely would bring the same result: Up to a year in jail, though probation would be a good possibility, with tens of thousands of dollars in fines.

Morrison and his aides have said repeatedly they’ll vigorously defend the law against Tiller’s attempt to have it struck down as unconstitutional.

“We take every case we handle very seriously,” said Morrison spokeswoman Frances Gorman. “The findings of our investigation represent the full enforcement of the law.”

The law under which both Kline and Morrison charged Tiller applies after the 21st week of pregnancy and when a fetus can survive outside the womb.

Abortions in such cases can’t be performed unless two doctors agree a woman or girl could die if the pregnancy continues, or that she faces “substantial and irreversible” harm to “a major bodily function,” a phrase interpreted to mean mental health. The two doctors cannot be legally or financially affiliated.