David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress continue to fight in court to be allowed to release undercover videos exposing the abortion industry’s aborted baby body parts trade.
On Tuesday, lawyers for Daleiden and his organization asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a federal judge’s gag order banning hundreds of hours of undercover footage from ever being released, Reuters reports.
Daleiden said the videos contain evidence of infanticide.
“What’s on the footage from abortion industry tradeshows that [Planned Parenthood] leaders are so desperate to cover up?” Daleiden wrote on Twitter in 2021. “Maybe it has something to do with the baby parts companies sponsoring the tradeshow? Maybe with our expert who says the [conversations] show infanticide? The truth must be revealed.”
The undercover journalist recorded the videos when he attended National Abortion Federation conferences in 2014 and 2015, posing as a potential buyer of aborted baby body parts. Because Daleiden signed a contract with NAF that prohibited recordings, the pro-abortion group sued him, arguing that he violated the agreement.
In 2021, U.S. District Judge William Orrick granted a request from NAF for a permanent injunction against Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress, requiring them to turn over the videos and never release them publicly.
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On Tuesday, Daleiden’s lawyers defended his actions as journalistic freedom protected by the U.S. Constitution, according to Reuters.
“Even if it were true that Defendants breached the agreements, that does not justify forever enjoining core First Amendment expression,” lawyer Heather Hacker told the Ninth Circuit court.
The gag order also violates copyright laws and hinders the defense in a separate criminal case against Daleiden in California, his lawyers said.
For more than five years, the undercover journalist and his team have battled prosecution and lawsuits from powerful pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood and political leaders like Vice President Kamala Harris and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, both former California attorney generals.
Daleiden pointed out earlier this year: “They’ve never proven what I said false. They just use the police power of the state to try to silence me.”
In 2021, lawyer Peter Breen, of the Thomas More Society, told the federal judge that releasing the undercover footage is a matter of “public interest.” Breen said police and lawmakers especially should be allowed to view the videos if they are investigating NAF or Planned Parenthood.
But Orrick disagreed, arguing in his ruling that he personally reviewed the recordings and found “no criminal activity,” Breitbart reported at the time.
Here’s more from The Federalist:
Daleiden’s defense team was hoping an expert report from an OB-GYN and longtime abortionist Forrest Smith, who reviewed the videos and testified that Planned Planned employees violated standard medical practices, would contradict Orrick’s own findings … It appears Orrick had no problem finding a way to disregard Smith’s report altogether, to instead rely on his own “personal review” of the videos.
In deciding whether the videos are of “public interest,” Orrick admitted that the Center for Medical Progress’s investigations “resulted in government investigations, criminal prosecutions, and regulatory activity,” but determined once again that the videos he watched “disclosed no criminal activity.”
In a statement last year, the Center for Medical Progress said Smith, the longest-practicing abortion provider in the U.S., reviewed the videos and found evidence of infanticide and sales of aborted baby body parts.
The judge’s “decision hides the most incriminating and damning footage under the fig leaf of trade show exhibit agreements which explicitly permitted exhibitor recording,” the organization said.
Orrick has ties to Planned Parenthood but refused to recuse himself from the case.
Daleiden is facing criminal charges in a separate unjust prosecution by the California Attorney General’s Office. It initially began with former Attorney General Kamala Harris, now vice president of the United States.
The California Attorney General’s Office claims Daleiden and fellow undercover investigator Sandra Merritt broke the law by filming conversations with abortionists and others without their consent. Daleiden and Merritt are facing possible jail time and fines if convicted.
Daleiden’s undercover investigation shocked the world with its expose of Planned Parenthood’s baby body parts harvesting practices. It led to numerous state and federal investigations. U.S. Senate and House committee investigations both concluded with referrals to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution.
Later, two of Planned Parenthood’s business partners in Orange County, California admitted to selling aborted baby body parts in a $7.8 million settlement with the county district attorney’s office.
Their undercover videos did a lot of damage to Planned Parenthood when they revealed the abortion giant’s baby body parts operation. Not only did the Center for Medical Progress investigation raise concerns about potentially illegal sales of human body parts, but it also uncovered evidence of abortionists allegedly putting women’s lives at greater risk by altering abortion procedures to better harvest aborted baby parts. The investigators also found evidence of possible patient privacy violations.
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.
