Judge lifts restraining order against CMP

A Los Angeles judge has lifted a temporary restraining order preventing the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) from releasing some of its undercover videos.

The footage features executives from StemExpress, a tissue company that until last week purchased parts of aborted babies from Planned Parenthood. After CMP began releasing videos taken as part of its three-year investigation into the abortion giant’s involvement in the tissue trade, StemExpress sued, claiming the pro-life group broke California’s wire tapping laws to obtain its information.

But earlier today, Superior Court Judge Joanne O’Donnell ruled any attempt to block CMP from making its undercover videos public would infringe on the group’s First Amendment right to free speech. Using the same legal reasoning, O’Donnell last week denied StemExpress’ demand for copies of CMP’s videos and other investigative material.

StemExpress can still press forward with its case against CMP, but the pro-life group’s lawyers applauded today’s ruling as a victory for free speech.

“The legal impact of today’s ruling is huge, not only for the sake of exposing the truth about the secretive and lucrative business of trafficking fetal organs, but it is also a remarkable victory for free-speech advocates,” Catherine Short, vice president of legal affairs for the Life Legal Defense Foundation, which represents CMP, told LifeNews.

The footage StemExpress tried to block includes a May 22 meeting between company representative Catherine Dyer and actors posing as tissue buyers. CMP founder David Daleiden has said the conversation shows a top StemExpress staffer admitting the company “sometimes gets fully intact fetuses shipped to their laboratory from the abortion clinics they work with.”

In its latest video, released this week, CMP captured a Planned Parenthood staffer and an executive from Novogenix Laboratories admitting intact aborted babies are not unheard of. Former StemExpress technician Holly O’Donnell recounted seeing at least one such infant, its heart still beating.

After today’s ruling, CMP released a trailer video for future installments of its Human Capital project. One brief clip shows Dyer during a meeting at a restaurant.

“Oh yeah, I mean if we have intact cases, which we’ve done a lot, we sometimes ship those to our lab in their entirety,” she says.