Topeka ? An attorney for Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus today said she had no financial relationship with Dr. George Tiller in consulting on late-term abortions.

“Dr. Neuhaus wasn’t paid anything by Dr. Tiller,” said Jack Focht of Wichita. “She didn’t have any financial relationship with him,” he said.

On Thursday, Attorney General Paul Morrison filed 19 misdemeanor charges against Tiller, alleging that he violated the late-term abortion law.

Under Kansas law, abortions after 22 weeks of pregnancy are illegal unless two physicians determine that continuation of the pregnancy threatens the life or health of the mother.

The two determining physicians cannot have any legal or financial ties, according to the law.

Morrison alleges that Neuhaus, of Nortonville, who was consulted as the second physician of record in 19 of the reviewed abortions, had financial ties to Tiller.

But Focht said that wasn’t the case.

“He (Tiller) did not pay her for those referrals. I think he (Morrison) is making a strained interpretation of the law,” Focht said.

Neuhaus operated an abortion clinic from 1997 to 2002 at 205 W. Eighth St. in Lawrence.

Neuhaus said she had to close the clinic because of debt incurred from several weeks of inactivity in 2001 after the Kansas Board of Healing Arts began investigating an allegation that Neuhaus performed an abortion on a patient who had withdrawn consent. The charge was never substantiated.