In a victory for the pro-life activists behind the expose’ videos that have caught Planned Parenthood selling aborted babies and their body parts for research, a judge has ruled the biotech firm StemExpress can’t take videos and documentation from them.
While the videos have focused on the Planned Parenthood abortion business, the biotech firm StemExpress, which buys and resells aborted baby body parts from the abortion giant, has filed a lawsuit seeking to block some information the Center for Medical Progress obtained in its three year undercover operation.
Last month, a court in California blocked the pro-life group from releasing any videos regarding certain meetings of the middleman, StemExpress. The restraining order does not apply to the Planned Parenthood abortion business or even to StemExpress in its entirety, making it so additional videos were released.
SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must De-Fund Planned Parenthood Immediately
Now, a Superior Court of the State of California issued a decision Thursday in StemExpress v. The Center for Medical Progress, which prohibits a biomedical company from accessing the material of an investigative journalist exposing Planned Parenthood’s selling of fetal body parts.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joanne O’Donnell said the firm is unlikely to prevail in its case to abrogate CMP’s First Amendment rights.
“Plaintiff does not persuade the Court that the discovery it seeks is necessary to obtain the preliminary injunction. That is because it appears unlikely that the Court is going to grant the preliminary injunction,” Judge O’Donnell said in her Thursday order.
“The injunction Plaintiff seeks would prevent Defendants from disseminating the videotapes,” said the judge. “First, this proposed injunction would constitute a prior restraint on the Defendants’ rights under the First Amendment and the parallel protections under the California Constitution.”
Attorneys with the pro-life Alliance Defending Freedom legal group told LifeNews that this is a victory for David Daleiden and CMP.
“People who don’t have anything to hide don’t go to court to stop journalists from reporting the truth. The court was right to deny StemExpress’ request to gain access to damaging material against them obtained through solid investigative journalism. Americans have the right to know the truth about Planned Parenthood’s sale of baby body parts and the ‘fiscal rewards’ Stem Express says that it provides to abortion clinics,” said Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund President Chuck LiMandri.
Another pro-life attorney in the case applauded the decision.
“As has been more than apparent from the videos that have been released, StemExpress and Planned Parenthood have plenty to hide. These videos not only expose the potential illegality of Planned Parenthood’s actions, they expose the grisly, inhuman nature of Planned Parenthood’s business,” said Life Legal Defense Foundation Vice President of Legal Affairs Catherine Short.
After the initial court decision, CMP talked about why StemExpress was attempting to keep it from releasing additional videos and information.
“StemExpress, a for-profit company partnered with over 30 abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood, to harvest and sell aborted baby parts and provide a “financial benefit” to Planned Parenthood clinics, is attempting to use meritless litigation to cover-up this illegal baby parts trade, suppress free speech, and silence the citizen press reporting on issues of burning concern to the American public,” CMP said in a statement.
The group continued in its statement to LifeNews: “They are not succeeding—their initial petition was rejected by the court, and their second petition was eviscerated to a narrow and contingent order about an alleged recording pending CMP’s opportunity to respond. The Center for Medical Progress follows all applicable laws in the course of our investigative journalism work and will contest all attempts from Planned Parenthood and their allies to silence our First Amendment rights and suppress investigative journalism.”
As LifeNews reported, the first video of undercover footage shows Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, describing how Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of aborted unborn children and admitting she uses partial-birth abortions to supply intact body parts.
SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must Investigate Planned Parenthood for Selling Aborted Baby Parts
In the second video, Planned Parenthood doctor Mary Gatter discusses the pricing of aborted baby body parts — telling the biotech company officials that the prices for such things as a baby’s liver, head or heart are negotiable. She also tells the officials that she could talk with the Planned Parenthood abortion practitioners to potentially alter the abortion procedure to kill the baby in a way that would best preserve those body parts after the unborn child is killed in the abortion.
The sixth and most recent video features Holly O’Donnell, a licensed phlebotomist who unsuspectingly took a job as a “procurement technician” at the fetal tissue company and biotech start-up StemExpress in late 2012. That’s the company that acts as a middleman and purchases the body parts of aborted babies from Planned Parenthood to sell to research universities and other places.
The new video includes O’Donnell’s eyewitness narrative of the daily practice of fetal body parts harvesting in Planned Parenthood abortion clinics, describing tissue procurement workers’ coordination with abortion providers, the pressure placed on patients, and disregard for patient consent.
So far, 12 states have responded to the Planned Parenthood videos and launched investigations into their abortion and organ harvesting business including South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Kansas, Missouri, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio, Georgia, Texas and Louisiana. The district attorney in Houston Texas is also investigating after the Houston-based Planned Parenthood abortion facility was caught selling aborted babies.
Congress has expanded its investigation into the Planned Parenthood abortion business and three states have revoked taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood’s abortion business, including Alabama, New Hampshire and Louisiana.
The full, unedited videos have confirmed that revelations that some aborted baby remains sold by Planned Parenthood go to biotech companies for the purpose of creating “humanized” mice. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood has been exposed as having sold body parts from aborted babies for as much as 15 years.
