David v. Abortion Goliath

An ongoing legal battle continues over the Center for Medical Progress’ 30-month undercover investigation which, in 2015, exposed Planned Parenthood’s “dirty business of buying and selling fetal parts and organs” for profit, in violation of the law, and “revealed practices so abhorrent that the United States Congress issued criminal referrals for Planned Parenthood, and numerous states and elected officials have moved to strip it of funding.”

Thomas More Society’s Peter Breen, defense attorney for CMP’s lead investigative journalist David Daleiden, called the lawsuit

“payback for Daleiden exposing Planned Parenthood. Rather than face up to its heinous doings, Planned Parenthood chose to persecute the person who exposed it. I am fully confident that when this case has run its course, justice will prevail, and David will be vindicated.”

CMP and Daleiden’s attorneys are appealing the latest decision handed down on November 15, 2019. After six weeks of arguments in San Francisco’s U.S. District Court before Judge William H. Orrick III, and less than two days of jury deliberations, the civil trial’s verdict in Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. v. Center for Medical Progress was decided by 10 jurors, awarding the abortion giant $2.3 million in punitive damages under federal racketeering law.

Corruption

Judge Orrick unethically refused to recuse himself, despite the defense’s request and Orrick’s blatant bias and conflict of interest, as a founder of a Planned Parenthood clinic; Orrick helped open, run, and fund the San Francisco clinic for many years.

Orrick violated due process, granted anonymity to CMP’s accusers, suppressed key evidence, and issued a gag order to block the release of over a dozen videos which exposed top-level Planned Parenthood abortionists’ appalling, candid discussions of illegal sales of babies’ body parts and unethical abortion practices:

Admissions of violence, guilt

Founder of Planned Parenthood’s Consortium of Abortion Providers (CAPS) drew laughter from the crowd describing “an eyeball fell into my lap, and that is gross.”

Director of Planned Parenthood in Michigan admitted the abortionists actually agree abortion is “violence, it’s a person, it’s killing,” and described hemorrhages and “babies’ heads that get stuck that we can’t get out,” which risk injury and life threatening infections to women.

Planned Parenthood abortionists describe “crushing” babies’ body parts, including skulls, to obtain organs. Deputy Director of the ACLU Reproductive Health Freedom Project discusses how “when the skull is broken, that’s really sharp! I understand why people are talking about getting that skull out, that calvarium,” which risks cutting a woman’s cervix.

Another Planned Parenthood abortionist described the dangerous, forceful grasping with sharp clamps during brutal dismemberment abortion procedures, “Am I getting the uterus or the fetus?’ Oh good, fetus,” and told CMP investigators, “The fetus is a tough little object, and taking it apart is very difficult.”

Director of abortion services at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast admitted if she is “doing a procedure, and I’m seeing that I’m in fear that it’s about to” be an illegal partial-birth abortion, she will “pull off a leg, or two,” so it’s not classified as such.

New York City’s Planned Parenthood director of abortion services admitted the abortion facilities with which she’s affiliated “certainly do intact [dilation and evacuations],” or dismemberment abortions, though it is clearly not standard to deliver intact babies during such a procedure. She added, “financial incentive” offered to abortion facilities for baby body parts make “the people we have to get this approved [by] very happy.”

Other Planned Parenthood officials echoed the company’s willingness to sell fetal tissue. National Director of Planned Parenthood’s CAPS acknowledged, “The truth is that some [clinics sell fetal tissue] to increase their revenues, and we can’t stop them.”

Director of Maryland’s Planned Parenthood added, “I know Planned Parenthood sells a lot of stuff to people.”

An employee of StemExpress, one of the fetal tissue companies implicated in CMP’s videos, agreed, “There’s a lot of clinics that we work with that it helps them out significantly,” implying unlawful profiting from sales of baby parts. Daleiden’s testimony also exposed StemExpress supplied human fetal hearts to Stanford for a study that required alive hearts harvested from live babies.

The videos exposed Planned Parenthood executives “haggling over prices of aborted baby body parts,” including the medical directors’ council president for Planned Parenthood Federation of America infamously saying she “want[s] a Lamborghini,” while callously negotiating compensation for baby parts during dinner.

The videos also revealed Planned Parenthood officials “discussing how to change abortion procedures to obtain more intact organs,” despite it is illegal to alter abortion procedures to harvest body parts. In fact, the recordings show abortionists knowingly, deliberately endanger women’s health by overly dilating women to deliver intact babies to harvest organs from live babies.

Abortion consultant Ruth Arick admitted, “Some researchers are looking for whole fetuses, so you over-dilate, to be able to extract an entire fetus, but the over-dilation can be a risk to the woman, so it’s a game. But for them, it’s risk, and malpractice, and it’s a risk to women if I’m over-dilating.” Arick admitted abortion causes babies’ deaths, called the partial-birth ban “crazy,” and advised CMP’s undercover investigators, posing as a start-up procurement company, which abortion clinics will over-dilate and not use the drug digoxin, which stops the baby’s heart, in order to harvest organs, since the drug taints specimens and renders tissue useless for experimentation purposes.

Investigational and court findings

In his investigation, Daleiden had extensive conversations with neurobiologist Dr. Hurlbut, stem cell scientist Dr. Deisher, and medical specialist Dr. McCurdy. Each indicated a fetus needed to be born alive in order to collect the specimen required for research, and Deisher specified, “The fetus would have to be alive at the time the organs were harvested.”

Daleiden brought further expert testimony to confirm Planned Parenthood is “violating all kinds of medical ethics, laws, and standards of patient care.” Testimony included that of United States’ longest-practicing abortionist Forrest Smith, who has performed over 50,000 abortions. Smith testified for the defense, despite responding after Daleiden’s exposé in 2015, “I’m going to take down that son of a b*tch. He’s f***ing with me now.” Initially intending to “expose Daleiden as a fraud,” Smith met with Daleiden in 2015, but after watching the videos, Smith realized not only was Daleiden “telling the truth,” but also admitted “he didn’t know the half of what was going on,” and that the investigation exposed only the “tip of the iceberg” of abortion’s gruesome business.

Daleiden calls Smith an abortionist who is “very honest” and has “no illusions” about the abortion industry. Smith admits abortion is killing a human being and acknowledges Planned Parenthood uses manipulative euphemisms such as “fetal demise” to deceive women in order to profit from more abortions.

Arick said women are falsely told their babies will not feel pain, and are manipulated by “quick counseling” that donating fetal tissue for research helps them feel less “selfish” and that they are doing “something good.” In fact, 84% of women are not fully or properly informed, over 70% are pressured and receive no counseling about alternatives, and over 50% feel rushed and uncertain.

Smith opposes Planned Parenthood’s violations of informed consent and assumption of risk, and its dangerous, unethical, and illegal abortion practices, testifying that an abortionist should do an abortion in the “fastest safest way” (though all abortions increase risks to women), that any change in the procedure should be explained to the patient beforehand, and that an abortionist must tell his patient she can “choose the mechanics of the death of your fetus.” CMP’s investigation and Smith’s testimony, however, make it clear Planned Parenthood unethically increases risks to women by unlawfully altering procedures to criminally harvest and sell organs.

Smith also testified in response to a 2014 Planned Parenthood conference with the National Abortion Federation which revealed the abortion giant employs even more unethical and unsafe practices. High-level Planned Parenthood executives discussed “less crunchy” techniques, admitting illegally changing abortion procedures from electric to manual vacuum aspiration, despite it increasing blood loss for women, requiring more cervical dilation, and making the procedure last longer— all greater risks for the women. Smith explained this method would only be used to intentionally obtain intact babies and organs.

The videos further exposed not only are women purposefully over-dilated, but also given dangerously large doses of 300 to 400 mg of misoprostol every three to four hours to induce “tumultuous labor” which will result in “fetal expulsion,” in which “the fetus comes out without any assistance from the abortion doctor, no instrumentation.” In other words, instead of using sharp clamps to forcefully dismember live babies in excruciating pain, abortionists intentionally try to procure more intact bodies by painfully inducing women to prematurely birth live babies to harvest their organs.

Smith explained, “In this case, clearly the intent is same-day surgery. They fully intend to put the uterus into labor,” emphasizing, “very few people in abortion, outside of Planned Parenthood, do that.” Smith confirmed the description on the videos, by a procurement manager for fetal organ harvesters Advanced Bioscience Research, of a “fetus falling out” was, in fact, that irregular type of fetal expulsion, adding, “There’s no question some of these fetuses were live births.”

By contrast, Smith described the customary method for this type of abortion is to dilate the cervix by inserting laminaria, or seaweed sticks, one or two days before the abortion procedure, further explaining that misoprostol can act as a cervical preparation agent in small doses of 25 to 100 mg to soften the cervix for an induction of a term pregnancy. Even the abortion pill procedure uses misoprostol, which causes painful cramping and risks life-threatening hemorrhage, and even death.

Smith’s testimony also confirmed additional unethical abortion practices by Planned Parenthood which endanger women and result in live births. If a baby was expelled during an abortion using misoprostol, not digoxin, “No question it’s alive.” Smith also affirms the medical standard for determining signs of life is a beating heart, and revealed Planned Parenthood and other abortionists alter medical standards to falsely claim “fetal demise” by merely observing “no movement,” “cord clamped,” or “arms, legs torn off,” which Smith notes “is completely wrong.”

Arick told CMP investigators about clinics which do not use digoxin on viable babies up to 24 weeks, and that an abortionist in Manhattan clamps the cord and “just waits a minute or two,” falsely claiming “you’ll have fetal demise right then.”

Smith testified that for 25 years, he has used a rarely discussed abortion method to circumvent the partial-birth abortion ban. His technique is to extract the umbilical cord, and cut it so “exsanguination can occur,” which cuts off the baby’s blood supply, drains the baby’s blood and waits for cardiac arrest. Smith explained he “watches with ultrasound” while the baby’s heart will continue to beat for “six-and-a-half to seven minutes,” though babies older than 20 weeks take longer, and this inhumane procedure is done on viable babies who can survive outside the womb.

Smith further testified Planned Parenthood abortionists are “having live births” but inaccurately determining fetal demise by “lack of pulsation of the fetal cord,” which is “not fetal demise.”

Defense attorney Breen attempted to clarify such faulty method meant babies are alive after being expelled from the uterus, and would then be killed by being harvested for organs minutes later, but that line of questioning was not allowed, in a biased ruling that deemed it as speculative and irrelevant. However, Smith did confirm the proper standard of care for babies born alive during an abortion is to “institute promptly all resuscitative care,” explaining that if such treatment is not provided, the fetus “dies by neglect.”

Testimony and video evidence reveals such unlawful violations involve clinics nationwide. Planned Parenthood was exposed for having admitted to a mother if her 22-week baby was born alive, they would break his neck. A New York abortion clinic was exposed for dangerously telling a woman not to go to the hospital if her baby is born alive, but to “put it in a bag,” or “flush” the baby, and admitted they would drown it in a jar of “solution.” Arguing for a bill to protect babies born alive, which was blocked by Democrats, a Republican lawmaker who formerly worked in the medical field admitted she witnessed “infanticide,” babies born alive, turned face down and drowned in saline, and saw buckets full of drowned babies, whose pink skin was “burned by the saline.”

New York Democrats repealed protections for babies born alive, and Democrats in other states are following suit to allow abortion up to birth, including infanticide. Virginia’s Governor Northam infamously described abortions at the moment of birth, “The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” Northam falsely claimed that late-term abortions are only in cases of deformity or non-viable babies, when, in fact, most are elective, on healthy mothers and babies, and abortions for fetal anomaly increase harm to women, and are never necessary, as perinatal hospice treatment can provide safe healthcare for even terminal babies.

More exposure of corruption

CMP’s videos also exposed DeShawn Taylor, medical director of Planned Parenthood in Arizona cautioning to “pay attention to who is in the room” when babies are born alive. Taylor also said abortions which do not use digoxin require “more force,” joking, “I have to hit the gym” to dismember babies approximately 20 weeks old — when babies are about the size of a cantaloupe and can feel pain — as the older the gestational age, the harder to tear apart and crush the skull, or “decompress calvaria,” as Taylor deceptively calls such a violent act.

For perspective, premature babies just one week older at 21 weeks have survived, when dismemberment abortion is inhumanely still performed up to 24 weeks without digoxin. Brain and nerve development begins in the first trimester, when babies already react to touch, and babies as young as 15 weeks demonstrate extremely sensitive responses to painful stimuli. In fact, preborn babies show greater responses to pain than adults. Perinatal medicine treats fetal patients as young as 18 weeks for dozens of conditions, and administering anesthesia and pain medication is standard care, as babies at this age have stress reactions to noxious stimuli. However, approximately three-fourths of babies born at 22 weeks receive no care, despite the fact that when given treatment, 60% survive.

Additional unlawful abuses exposed by CMP’s recordings prove Planned Parenthood’s profit-driven aims debunk any purported claims of women’s healthcare or “safe, legal, and rare” abortion. Senior director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Deborah Nucatola, testified she does 50 to 200 abortions a month, and admitted babies are flipped into breech position (and some beheaded) to leave the head intact to harvest brain. She detailed, “If [a fetal buyer] wants a brain, we’ll leave the calvarium in ’til last, and then try to basically take it, or actually catch everything, and keep it separate from the rest of the tissue so it doesn’t get lost.” Nucatola boasted, “We’ve been pretty successful with that,” that being the illegal partial-birth abortion method. She also confirmed digoxin cannot be used. “Providers who use digoxin just use it so that they have no risk of violating the federal abortion act. You want to induce demise before you do the procedure. No one is going to say you did a live – whatever the federal government calls it – partial birth abortion.” Nucatola is seen on video flippantly waving her arms, as if dismissing the thought of preventing a live birth as frivolous.

President of Operation Rescue and CMP board member, Troy Newman, confirms the videos provide “evidence that babies are being born alive during abortions at Planned Parenthood and then intentionally killed for their organs. This is no less than cold-hearted, premeditated murder. Furthermore, there is evidence that Planned Parenthood abortionists alter procedures to ensure the organs can be harvested. This is also a crime.”

Procurement of intact, viable babies

Having thought she applied for a job as a phlebotomist lab technician, StemExpress whistleblower Holley O’Donnell quickly realized otherwise on her first day, when she passed out while holding baby body parts with tweezers to identify dismembered head, arms and legs. In 2013, O’Donnell told Daleiden she was instructed to harvest body parts from the fully intact live 25-week old baby of a distraught woman.

O’Donnell described the Planned Parenthood abortionist was frustrated because the mother would not calm down and could not be medicated because certain drugs render fetal specimens useless to researchers. After the questionable late-term abortion, O’Donnell explained how her supervisor called her in “to see something kind [of] cool. It’s kind [of] neat!” She tapped and showed O’Donnell the baby’s beating heart, and then used scissors to cut through the lower jaw into the face, “We’re going to procure a brain.” O’Donnell continued, “She gave me the scissors and told me to cut down the middle of the face” to harvest the brain. O’Donnell reluctantly removed the baby’s brain, and was left to clean up the mess. The biohazard container was so overflowing, the baby got stuck with his legs dangling out. O’Donnell had to shove each leg into the bag. Crying, O’Donnell later returned to the container to hold the baby boy one last time, and explained, “It’s just really hard knowing that you’re the only person who’s ever going to hold that baby.”

O’Donnell’s testimony was not allowed into evidence, despite her firsthand accounts exposing numerous inhumane and illegal violations by Planned Parenthood throughout CMP’s Human Capital video series, including illegal partial-birth abortions, illegal sales of body parts, unlawful altering of abortion methods, and exposing patients’ information. Planned Parenthood also violates laws requiring written consent from mothers to use fetal tissue for research, and even fails to obtain consent to abort.

StemExpress’ CEO admitted on video they have “done a lot” of “intact cases,” understood as whole fetal bodies, and testified StemExpress does indeed harvest and supply fully intact babies, and when the brain is harvested, the head is still attached to the body. Since digoxin “damages the specimen,” such an admission indicates babies are born alive. Daleiden’s attorney, Breen, added, “That is an especially gruesome admission, but it begs the question: how did they get these fully intact human children? If you have a fetus with an intact head and an intact body, and intact extremities, that would indicate that child was born alive, and then had their organs cut out of them, or that the child was the victim of an illegal partial-birth abortion. Both of these are gruesome and violent acts.”

Such barbaric acts are arguably as atrocious as the criminal acts committed by infamous abortionist Kermit Gosnell, who snipped babies’ necks, or abortionist Douglas Karpen in Texas, who punctured babies’ soft spots or abdomens, as nurses witnessed babies’ toes curl in pain. Planned Parenthood deliberately endangering women to deliver and harvest organs from live babies for illegal sales of body parts is at least equally criminal, and alarmingly, is not an outlier among other abortion clinics also hiding criminal conduct and endangering women’s health.

How did this all start?

Similar unlawful abuses are what prompted Daleiden’s investigation in the first place. Formerly working in investigative research with Live Action, one of the largest pro-life groups whose investigative work has exposed numerous violations by Planned Parenthood, Daleiden watched a 20/20 documentary in which a former tissue procurer working inside a Kansas Planned Parenthood stated that the company he worked for received intact, living babies, and specified that when harvesting the organs from the babies, they were “cutting open the chest and seeing the heart was still beating.” He later testified in a congressional hearing that an abortionist gave him 24-week-old twins who had survived an abortion, and when he refused to “harvest organs from living children,” the abortionist “drowned them in a pan.”

Daleiden was then compelled to read Beyond Abortion, a Chronicle of Fetal Experimentation, an extensive review of fetal experimentation. One study involved submerging a living baby in an apparatus to simulate life inside the womb to discover “how long the fetus can stay alive.” It was clear the studies used abortion survivors, but those responsible for the horrors had escaped scrutiny, so Daleiden began investigating further into the fetal harvesting industry.

He discovered StemExpress through a Craigslist advertisement for procurement technicians. StemExpress’ website included drop-down menus for ordering desired body parts of desired gestational age, like a “grocery list.” Daleiden also looked into the nation’s largest Planned Parenthood affiliate and its long-standing partner, Advanced Bioscience Research, including fetal tissue procurement for the government.

Dr. Deisher confirmed, “They want those babies coming out with beating hearts,” adding that Smith’s testimony made it “very clear that this is intentional.”

American Center for Law and Justice Chief Counsel, Jay Sekulow, who is defending the CMP journalists, said Planned Parenthood “fought tooth and nail” to keep details of the CMP investigation from the jury.

The damning evidence of Planned Parenthood’s gruesome practices sparked public outrage, congressional House and Senate hearings, and an ongoing Department of Justice criminal investigation into Planned Parenthood.

The subsequent retaliatory lawsuit asserts trumped up charges of trespassing, fraud, and violation of the RICO statute, even claiming security “threats” which include mere letters from people saying they are praying for the abortion clinic staff.

CMP’s attorney, Breen, stated,

“We intend to seek vindication for [Daleiden] on appeal. His investigation into criminal activity by America’s largest abortion provider utilized standard investigative journalism techniques, those applied regularly by news outlets across the country.”

Outcome and comments on the decision

Judge Orrick limited the scope of the trial, excluding actual facts of abortion procedures or the selling of body parts, instructing the jury that the trial was “not about the truth of whether [Planned Parenthood] profited from the sale of fetal tissue or otherwise violated the law [or] actually engaged in illegal conduct.” Orrick repeatedly curtailed the defense’s questions, ordered a recess, excused the jury, and suppressed relevant evidence.

No restrictions were imposed on Planned Parenthood, but the defense was forced to show limited video clips without sound or subtitles, or to only show a clip to a witness but not the jury, without even allowing the witness to describe the content. Thus, the defense’s hands were tied, while Planned Parenthood was allowed to falsely “make the case that Daleiden and his team illegally recorded private conversations, without admitting what exactly those conversations were about.”

Daleiden explained, “The case has been massively cut down,” which reveals “this isn’t really a real lawsuit,” and “Planned Parenthood doesn’t really have a case.”

Orrick further hampered the defense by barring their First Amendment defense. The biased judge already found that the defendants “trespassed when they attended, undercover, Planned Parenthood conferences.” Thus, Orrick “told the jury the defendants breached contracts,” and that the jury “should award damages for those breaches,” and “instructed the jury to only concern themselves with the damages that the defendants are liable for trespass.”

Therefore, the defense is based on law which allows covert taping of confidential information when collecting evidence of violent crimes, and also argues confidentiality law excludes conversations in a public gathering or that can reasonably be expected to be overheard. In fact, Daleiden testified he had spoken with law experts before his investigation to ensure that he could legally record the public conversations. The defense also produced evidence non-disclosure agreements were not signed at the time of taping.

Further, Planned Parenthood’s lead counsel lied to the jury during closing arguments, claiming Daleiden did not report Planned Parenthood to law enforcement agencies, when in reality, CMP had produced the reports to law enforcement during discovery for the case, and Planned Parenthood has been aware of them for over a year.

Daleiden asserted the trial is about “defending First Amendment rights in exposing the abortion industry. Free speech and free reporting are going on trial.”

Thomas More Society’s president and chief counsel, Tom Brejcha, warned the implications of this lawsuit go far beyond 

“exposing the evils of the abortion industry. This case is a terrible misreading of our fundamental constitutional laws about free speech” and “puts the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech on trial. It tests the sacred tenet of freedom of the press. Planned Parenthood decided that it was above the law. Planned Parenthood was wrong, and I am confident that we will win on appeal.”

CMP’s attorney Harmeet Dhillon recognized the hypocrisy of those opining about the sanctity of whistleblowers who suddenly fail to defend Daleiden for blowing the whistle on Planned Parenthood’s illegal conduct, as they consider protecting abortion more important than women’s safety, human rights, and the First Amendment. Dhillon responded,

“Planned Infanticide stipulated in court that the words on the videos were indeed spoken by their staffers, including changing abortion procedures to get more usable fetal parts. They sued citizen journalists for revenge. We’ll see them in the 9th Circuit.”

District Attorney for Daleiden, Brentford Ferreira, noted,

“Every video recording was obviously and unquestionably made in a public place where it could not possibly be considered ‘confidential.’ The only difference between David’s conduct and that of undercover journalists every day in the state of California is the fact that he recorded the political backers of the state’s top prosecutor.”

Having previously successfully defended a pro-life activist in a RICO case, winning at the Supreme Court, unanimously overturning the lower court decision, the Thomas More Society’s attorneys are not only appealing the latest federal court decision in CMP’s civil trial, but also continue to defend Daleiden in an ongoing California state criminal trial over the same exposé investigation, being heard in the Superior Court of California County of San Francisco, California, by Judge Christopher Hite.

Daleiden faces bogus prosecution by the successor of former California Attorney General, now Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Both are close allies with and supported and funded by Planned Parenthood. Harris’ prosecutorial abuse initiated the biased criminal case against Daleiden after she ordered his home raided and video evidence stolen, via a “sham” warrant, as a “political favor to Planned Parenthood.”

Daleiden’s legal team produced evidence of collusion between Planned Parenthood and Harris, including emails and testimony that some staff were coerced into raiding Daleiden’s home against their better judgment.

Daleiden warns that Harris is 

“the greatest threat to civil rights and to our constitutional natural rights — First Amendment, everything else — that we’ve seen in our country in generations. She is not for the people. Kamala Harris is there to fool the people, and she’s here to control the people.”

Daleiden continued,

“California law does not make it a crime to record open conversation in a public area, like a restaurant or hotel lobby, which is what we did, what journalists do every day, and publish, and not one of them has had a search warrant served on them for doing undercover video. My case is the only one.

They are about power and control, and they will be ruthless in trying to enforce that, which is what they’re doing to me and what they will try to do to many others. That’s why Kamala Harris is one of the biggest threats to civil rights that we’ve seen in this country in a very long time. Her candidacy is very dangerous and should be very vigorously and publicly opposed.”

Investigative journalist group Project Veritas concurred the “abortion industry flexes its muscle. Planned Parenthood did not contest the accuracy of Daleiden’s undercover video reports.” Rather, the defendants were “squeezed” by various states’ threats of criminal prosecution, “the jury was allowed to draw adverse inference,” and the Federal Court’s verdict

“clearly demonstrates the power [and] influence of the abortion industry. The real injustice is the unequal application of the law. This case is, undoubtedly, ideologically motivated. David Daleiden would be a national hero if he had done the same thing to an organization supporting animal cruelty, California prosecutors would have exercised discretion, favoring the public’s right to know the facts he brought to light. Counsel for Daleiden said he didn’t do this ‘for profit or personal gain. He did it for the paramount purpose of letting Americans know’ [about] the abortion of human babies and sale of baby parts. Planned Parenthood lawyers stated the case is about ‘protecting the brand.’ The very words spoken by Planned Parenthood personnel on those videos is what hurt the brand. We must never forget that, in a democratic republic, the right to know information is of paramount importance. Justice is supposed to be blind, but we sadly live in a country where, increasingly, there is a lack of equal justice under the law as it pertains to the First Amendment. This is particularly so in California where these types of investigations are needed more than ever.”

Project Vertitas’ lead investigative journalist, James O’Keefe, added,

“The verdict in the David Daleiden case is a complete travesty of justice and a significant wound to the First Amendment. If David had exposed the unethical and commercial destruction of puppies the country would have rallied to his defense.”

Pro-Life San Francisco emphasized that CMP’s recordings expose

“the undeniably sinister nature and world of fetal organ harvesting. We will not be silenced when the already barely existent parameters around fetal exploitation are blatantly and proudly ignored— when abortionists brag about altering procedures to obtain more lucrative human specimens, at the very real risk to the lives [and] women involved!”

CMP’s press release stated,

“Justice was not done today. While top Planned Parenthood witnesses spent six weeks testifying under oath that the undercover videos are true, and Planned Parenthood sold fetal organs on a quid pro quo basis, a biased judge with close Planned Parenthood ties spent six weeks influencing the jury with pre-determined rulings, and by suppressing video evidence, all in order to rubber-stamp Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit attack on the First Amendment. This is a dangerous precedent for citizen journalism and First Amendment civil rights across the country, sending a message that speaking truth and facts criticizing the powerful is no longer protected by our institutions.”

If justice prevails, the vulnerable — liberties, human rights, citizen journalists, women, and children— will win on appeal against the powerful, abusive, and corrupt.