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.

Morrison alleges that Tiller broke the law by getting a second opinion for 19 late-term abortions in 2003 from Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus, of Nortonville. He contends they were financially affiliated, partly because she did her consultations inside his clinic, and the work represented the bulk of her medical practice. Her attorney says Tiller never paid her — the patients did.

Kline alleged Tiller broke the law by having insufficient grounds for the late-term abortions. Kline contends Tiller performed them for patients who suffered from problems such as anxiety or “single episode” depression — not substantial or irreversible conditions.

There’s been plenty of public back-and-forth about the strength of Kline’s case. Morrison described Kline’s case as seriously, perhaps fatally, flawed. Abortion foes believe Morrison has chosen to focus on technical violations, not bigger legal questions about how Tiller operates.

Undoubtedly, abortion foes still resent Morrison’s election. His pitch to voters was that Kline’s judgment was too clouded by his personal agenda — a code phrase for Kline’s social conservatism — to be an effective attorney general.

Abortion opponents also are upset over how Kline’s case died. A district judge dismissed it for jurisdictional reasons.

But there’s more to their frustration.

A trial of Kline’s case promised to focus public attention on the abortions themselves, not on two doctors’ professional relationship.

The anti-abortion legislators who backed the 1998 law, including Kline and Powell, wanted the new statute to block medical procedures they saw as morally abhorrent, believing most Kansans held the same view.

Here’s how they’ve repeatedly put it, charged language and all: Under the law, only true medical emergencies are supposed to allow a doctor to kill a healthy baby in the womb when that baby could survive a premature birth.

They believe it’s an outrage that viable fetuses are regularly aborted in Kansas — four a week on average in 2006, more than 2,600 since the law took effect, according to state statistics.

“The intent of the legislation was to provide an outlet for preborn children’s lives to be spared,” Newman said.

That context explains why abortion opponents like Newman remain cold to Morrison’s efforts. They’d rather revive Kline’s case — or have an independent prosecutor file a case very much like it.

That’s why they’re planning to circulate petitions to force Sedgwick County to convene a grand jury to investigate Tiller again.