Judge Denies Request to Block Planned Parenthood Videos Exposing Sales of Aborted Baby Parts

National   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Feb 22, 2019   |   12:12PM   |   Washington, DC

A California judge denied prosecutors’ request to hide video evidence exposing Planned Parenthood’s baby body parts trade from the trial of undercover investigator Sandra Merritt this month.

These are the Planned Parenthood expose’ videos a federal appeals court ruled were authentic and not deceptively edited.

Merritt and Center for Medical Progress founder David Daleiden are on trial in California for secretly recording Planned Parenthood and other abortion activists as part of their undercover investigation. Lawyers for the team believe there is a “political vendetta” behind the prosecution.

Recently, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra asked that video evidence be sealed from the public for the trial. He did so at the request of Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation, according to the Liberty Counsel.

However, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Christopher Hite refused the request.

“The Attorney General has failed to rebut the strong presumption in favor of open public trials in this instance,” Hite wrote in his decision earlier this month.

The judge said he will seal the video evidence after Merritt’s hearing, though, Breitbart reports. It is slated to begin April 22.

Lawyers with the Liberty Counsel, which represents Merritt, said they are pleased that the videos will be public during the trial, but they plan to appeal Hite’s other decisions.

“Attorney General Becerra’s attempt to shield from the public the very same videos upon which he bases his political prosecution of Sandra Merritt is truly astonishing,” said Horatio Mihet, vice president of legal affairs for the counsel. “The only reason the attorney general wants to have these videos sealed and kept from the public eye is because the videos themselves provide damning evidence that these allegedly confidential conversations were not in fact confidential.”

Merritt and Daleiden are being “selectively and discriminatorily” prosecuted by California in an unprecedented way, according to the legal group. Liberty Counsel noted that the state never before has charged any other citizen journalist or journalism organization with a crime for undercover recordings.

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The Center for Medical Progress leaders face 15 felony charges for their undercover investigation that exposed Planned Parenthood’s baby body parts trade.

Earlier, LifeNews reported that Hite did seal the names of 14 abortion workers after prosecutors claimed their safety could be jeopardized. KVPR News reports Hite agreed and threatened to punish anyone who releases the names.

Mihet contended that safety is not prosecutors’ real concern, Courthouse News reports.

“The only reason the attorney general wants to have these videos sealed and kept from the public eye is because the videos themselves provide damning evidence that these allegedly confidential conversations were not in fact confidential,” he said. “The videos themselves put the lie to the attorney general’s case and reveal it for the fraud that it is.”

Pro-life advocates said the workers’ names are public and have been for years.

Hite also delayed the preliminary hearing after Planned Parenthood filed a last-minute motion to intervene in the case. According to CNS, the abortion chain wants to block the defense from cross-examining four of the 14 people whose names have been redacted, claiming they are “victims” under the state Marsy’s Law.

The report noted that Hite seemed skeptical of the abortion chain’s reasoning, but he did not rule on the matter yet.

Daleiden and Merritt have been defending themselves in court for years after they exposed gruesome baby body parts harvesting practices at Planned Parenthood. Many of the charges against them have been dropped, but the California case (originally started by pro-abortion presidential candidate Kamala Harris) continues.

The Center for Medical Progress investigation exposed numerous atrocities inside Planned Parenthood abortion facilities across the U.S. Its findings prompted investigations by the U.S. House and Senate, as well as a number of states.

The committees concluded by recommending that the Department of Justice investigate Planned Parenthood. Both said they found strong evidence that the abortion chain broke the law. The Department of Justice is investigating.

Planned Parenthood repeatedly has denied all allegations of wrong-doing, and many news outlets now parrot its talking points that the undercover videos were deceptively edited or debunked, even though that is not true. An independent forensics investigation verified that the videos were authentic.

Some undercover videos show how Planned Parenthood employees callously and flippantly negotiated the price of tiny baby hearts, lungs, livers and brains. Other evidence indicates the abortion giant may have broken HIPAA patient privacy laws.

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.