The Center for Medical Progress and David Daleiden filed three motions in San Francisco federal court yesterday seeking to dismiss the National Abortion Federation’s lawsuit that is blocking the release of additional videos exposing the Planned Parenthood abortion business and its sale of aborted baby parts. After multiple videos exposing the horrific practice, NAF and Planned Parenthood filed suit to stop the release of additional videos.
CMP and Daleiden asked the cout yesterday to dissolve the preliminary injunction gag order that censors CMP’s remaining undercover video of Planned Parenthood leaders negotiating the sale of aborted baby parts.
“Three years ago, Planned Parenthood’s abortion doctors with the National Abortion Federation stormed into federal court demanding a gag order over the most damning undercover footage,” Daleiden told LifeNews today. “Now they have largely retreated, dropping all of their federal claims and allegations of unlawful video recording, leaving only a simple contract dispute between fellow Californians.”
“Since the gag order was issued, two Congressional investigations, a successful case against Planned Parenthood’s business partners in southern California, and the ongoing U.S. Department of Justice investigation prove that CMP’s videos are accurate and Judge Orrick’s reasons for placing the gag order were false. This case should be thrown out of federal court, and the censored undercover videos must be released,” he continued.
Daliden said that NAF, largely made up of Planned Parenthood abortion leaders, falsely accused CMP and Daleiden of trespass, fraud, illegal videotaping, and even RICO. This summer some of those bogus claims were dropped.
NAF is suing on behalf of its members, who include many of the largest Planned Parenthood affiliates in California who are suing on some of the same claims in PP’s related federal lawsuit. Because NAF has now dropped all of its federal claims, this lawsuit is now just a contract dispute among several Californians and there is no longer any jurisdiction for it in federal court. Judge Orrick cannot make any more rulings in this case and must throw it out, Daleiden’s attorneys argue.
“NAF and its members cannot allege any plausible violation in their contract disputes–their argument boils down to asserting they were harmed because CMP’s actors did not actually buy aborted baby parts from them instead of just talking about it,” Daleiden said.
In February 2016, Judge Orrick granted NAF’s request for a Preliminary Injunction blocking the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood directors filmed at its annual meetings by CMP, based on NAF’s representation that CMP’s undercover work had not found any wrongdoing, and allegations that the videos placed NAF members under threat. In the past two years, Judge Orrick’s findings supporting his injunction have been proven false, Daleiden argues.
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Since the injunction was issued, two Congressional investigations prompted by CMP’s videos confirmed serious wrongdoing and “systematic violations” in Planned Parenthood and NAF’s fetal body parts supply, yielding over a dozen criminal and regulatory referrals, now being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice. A California District Attorney specifically credited CMP’s undercover work with prompting his successful prosecution of Planned Parenthood business partners the DaVinci companies for selling fetal tissue for profit, which the companies admitted in a $7.8 million settlement.
Although it has alleged the videos put abortion practitioners at risk, Daleiden said Planned Parenthood has admitted since the injunction was issued that CMP’s videos are not responsible for any specific violent threat to abortion providers, and NAF’s own statistics published since the injunction shows no increase in actual threats to NAF members attributable to the videos. CMP has never released a video calling for harm to anyone and has instead always directed the public to seek recourse through elected representatives and First Amendment speech.
Earlier this summer, the National Abortion Federation (NAF) dismissed seven out of eleven claims on Friday against Daleiden and his organization, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), in court on Friday. In 2015, NAF sued David and CMP after they began releasing undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking of baby body parts. Buying and selling fetal tissue is illegal under federal law.
Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund attorney Charles LiMandri said NAF successfully obtained a “gag order” from the court preventing Daleiden and CMP, during the course of litigation, from releasing the undercover videos recorded at NAF abortion conferences. Although dropping seven of the charges is a positive step, by dismissing the seven claims NAF is trying to speed up the case so it can secure a permanent gag order against David and CMP, which would block the release of the videos regardless of the case’s outcome, he said.
“NAF’s latest litigation maneuvering shows that this case has only ever been about one thing—an unconstitutional silencing of a pro-life hero. As the Trump Administration continues its investigation of NAF’s gruesome actions, we expect their lawyers to do everything they can to permanently silence David. After all, NAF realizes just as much as we do that criminal indictments for many of NAF’s members are only a matter of time,” LiMandri said in a statement.
NAF’s remaining claims accuse David and CMP of fraudulent misrepresentation, promissory fraud, breach of contract, and civil conspiracy. For instance, NAF complains that David broke the law because he allegedly violated the purported confidentiality agreements he signed at NAF’s annual conference.
LiMandri said: “NAF is using these purported confidentiality agreements to hide their criminal deeds. But the public has a right to know about the true nature of the abortion industry. We hope that as this case moves forward, the court concludes that NAF’s remaining claims are meritless.”
The gag order that the 9th Circuit placed on the Center for Medical Progress is unconstitutional based on past Supreme Court decisions, according to Daleiden’s attorneys. The Supreme Court previously decided that such gag orders and other forms of prior restraint are “the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.” It also ruled that prior restraint is particularly harmful “when the prior restraint falls upon the communication of news and commentary on current events.”
Judge William Orrick, however, ruled that because Daleiden signed a required non-disclosure agreement with the National Abortion Federation, he relinquished his First Amendment free speech rights. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
This action was unprecedented; Katie Short, Life Legal’s Vice President of Legal Affairs, pointed out that this is the first time a federal appeals court maintained a gag order, even if it is agreed to by the parties involved, if the exposure of the information in question is in the public’s interest.
But it is certainly not in Planned Parenthood’s best interest to have these videos exposed. One video shows abortion chain Dr. Deborah Nucatola explaining how to “crush” the unborn baby to harvest his or her organs intact. Several others expose the extensive revenue that Planned Parenthood receives from the trafficking the body parts.
Brejcha noted: “At the end of the day, the National Abortion Federation, Planned Parenthood and their allies will appeal every decision in our favor until they find judges who will rubberstamp their abortion agenda. Which means it’s absolutely critical we have the resources in place to keep defending David.”
The expose’ videos catching Planned Parenthood officials selling the body parts of aborted babies have shocked the nation. Here is a list of all 14:
- In the first video: Dr. Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood commented on baby-crushing: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
- In the second video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Mary Gatter joked, “I want a Lamborghini” as she negotiated the best price for baby parts.
- In the third video: Holly O’Donnell, a former Stem Express employee who worked inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, detailed first-hand the unspeakable atrocities and how she fainted in horror over handling baby legs.
- In the fourth video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Savita Ginde stated, “We don’t want to do just a flat-fee (per baby) of like, $200. A per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.” She also laughed while looking at a plate of fetal kidneys that were “good to go.”
- In the fifth video: Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood-Gulf Coast in Houston boasted of Planned Parenthood’s skill in obtaining “intact fetal cadavers” and how her “research” department “contributes so much to the bottom line of our organization here, you know we’re one of the largest affiliates, our Research Department is the largest in the United States.”
- In the sixth video: Holly O’Donnell described technicians taking fetal parts without patient consent: “There were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don’t know. And there’s no way they would know.”
- In the seventh and perhaps most disturbing video: Holly O’Donnell described the harvesting, or “procurement,” of organs from a nearly intact late-term fetus aborted at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s Alameda clinic in San Jose, CA. “‘You want to see something kind of cool,’” O’Donnell says her supervisor asked her. “And she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think.”
- In the eighth video: StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer admits Planned Parenthood sells “a lot of” fully intact aborted babies.
- The ninth video: catches a Planned Parenthood medical director discussing how the abortion company sells fully intact aborted babies — including one who “just fell out” of the womb.
- The 10th video: catches the nation’s biggest abortion business selling specific body parts — including the heart, eyes and “gonads” of unborn babies. The video also shows the shocking ways in which Planned Parenthood officials admit that they are breaking federal law by selling aborted baby body parts for profit.
- Unreleased Videos: Unreleased videos from CMP show Deb Vanderhei of Planned Parenthood caught on tape talking about how Planned Parenthood abortion business affiliates may “want to increase revenue [from selling baby parts] but we can’t stop them…” Another video has a woman talking about the “financial incentives” of selling aborted baby body parts.
- The 11th video: catches a Texas Planned Parenthood abortionist planning to sell the intact heads of aborted babies for research. Amna Dermish is caught on tape describing an illegal partial-birth abortion procedure to terminate living, late-term unborn babies which she hopes will yield intact fetal heads for brain harvesting.
- The 12th video in the series shows new footage of Jennefer Russo, medical director at Planned Parenthood in Orange County, California, describing to undercover investigators how her abortion business tries to harvest intact aborted babies’ bodies for a local for-profit biotech company and changes the abortion procedure to do so.
- The 13th video: exposes a Planned Parenthood medical director admitting that babies born alive after abortion are sometimes killed.
- The 14th video: catches Planned Parenthood executives discussing gruesome abortion procedures and the sale of body parts from aborted babies for profit.
