Abortion industry sharpens legal knives for court fight over undercover videos

The key to the abortion industry’s long-term success has been to keep its practices “out of sight and out of mind,” David Daleiden, director of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), said during a Tuesday night webcast. But after CMP’s first video exposed a Planned Parenthood senior director boasting her organization is “very good at getting heart, lung, liver,” its cloak of secrecy “is forever gone,” Daleiden said.

That exposure has been the greatest impact of CMP’s 30-month undercover investigation into Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted babies’ body parts, Daleiden told supporters.

David Bereit, national director of 40 Days for Life, hosted the webcast, during which Daleiden and two pro-life legal experts, Thomas Brejcha and Catherine Short, answered questions about the state of CMP’s probe into Planned Parenthood. Earlier in the day, CMP released its 10th undercover video.

During the webcast, Daleiden highlighted “three basic revelations” from CMP’s investigation previously unknown to the public: Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of aborted babies; its abortionists alter abortion procedures—often engaging in illegal methods—in order to obtain the least damaged fetal tissue; and illegal abortions and fetal tissue sales are not isolated to a few Planned Parenthood affiliates, but are “supported, approved, and covered up” at the highest levels of the organization, Daleiden said.

Daleiden, 26, said CMP’s investigation targeted abortionists because they are more honest—as truthful as pro-lifers, he asserted—about the violence of abortion than are pro-abortion activists and politicians. As a result of their candor, Planned Parenthood has had “to own up to what they do.”

But Bereit noted the nation’s largest abortion provider is not “going down without a fight.” Planned Parenthood hasn’t sued anyone yet, said Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society, which represents Daleiden and CMP. So far, the abortion giant is leaving the legal attacks to the National Abortion Federation, an abortion industry trade group, and Morrison Foerster, the major San Francisco law firm representing NAF in a lawsuit against Daleiden and CMP.

Although a California court lifted a temporary restraining order brought by biotech firm StemExpress—exposed in the undercover videos as a buyer of Planned Parenthood’s harvested fetal tissue—against CMP, NAF is seeking a permanent injunction against past and future CMP videos. Brejcha also said the lawsuit alleges CMP has engaged in racketeering and other criminal activities.

Short, vice president of legal affairs for the Life Legal Defense Foundation, also is serving as an attorney for Daleiden. She expressed optimism about Daleiden’s case but said it will “still take a rigorous defense” to protect him and First Amendment principles.