Overland Park Abortion Case: Doctor's License Suspended

OVERLAND PARK, KS — Dr. Allen S. Palmer, a former Planned Parenthood physician-contractor, has had his state medical license suspended for 90 days because he performed an abortion on a 13-year-old girl in Overland Park but failed to preserve a fetal tissue sample so it could be sent to authorities.

Palmer violated state law during the December 2014 abortion, the State Board of Healing Arts found. The suspension only affects the St. Louis-area doctor's ability to practice medicine in Kansas, which requires fetal tissue be preserved when an abortion is performed on patient younger than 14. The tissue is sent to the state Bureau of Investigation or an approved lab.

The girl said she had sex with a 19-year-old boyfriend, according to paperwork in the case. Sex with minors under 14 is considered rape under state law. (For more information on Palmer's case and other Overland Park stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

"The potential injury from this violation is severe in that a failure to preserve and submit fetal tissue may hinder a criminal prosecution," the board said in its order last week.

The board said the suspension would run through Dec. 7. The regional Planned Parenthood affiliate, now Planned Parenthood Great Plains, self-reported the issue to the state less than a month after the abortion. Palmer no longer provides services for it.

Palmer said during an August board hearing that he was "as shocked and awed by this failure as anybody here" but maintained he made an inadvertent mistake. He testified that he didn't know the girl's age, relied on Planned Parenthood's staff to tell him when a patient was under 14 and didn't perform abortions on girls that young.

He was a part-time contractor performing first-trimester abortions. He was filling in for a vacationing clinic medical director at the time of the girl's abortion. He has been licensed in Kansas to practice surgery and osteopathic medicine since 2008.

His attorney, Thomas Theis, of Topeka, did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment. Telephone listings for Palmer in Clayton and St. Louis County, Missouri, had been disconnected.

Palmer can ask the board to reconsider its action or seek to overturn it with a lawsuit.

The board noted that during his hearing, Palmer acknowledged that he had not reviewed the abortion patient's medical history. Had Palmer reviewed the patient's history, "her age would have been ascertained," the board said.

Palmer also said he was bound by Planned Parenthood's procedures. The board said those procedures had "inadequacies," though the Planned Parenthood affiliate reported revising them after the December 2014 abortion so that a patient's age would be more readily identified from electronic medical records. Its spokeswoman, Bonyen Lee-Gilmore, did not immediately return telephone messages seeking comment about Palmer's case.

By JOHN HANNA, Associated Press

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