StemExpress drops effort to quash Planned Parenthood video

As of this week, investigative group Center for Medical Progress (CMP) faces one fewer lawsuit connected to its undercover recordings revealing Planned Parenthood and other abortion facilities’ sale of aborted baby body parts.

StemExpress, a human tissue procurement company, dropped its lawsuit aimed at an incriminating video taken by CMP. The video shows CEO Cate Dyer describing her company’s baby body parts procurement.

CMP director David Daleiden told me StemExpress “decided to drop their own lawsuit and walk away with no money in damages, no attorney fees, nothing.”

In the summer of 2015, StemExpress sued CMP and sought a preliminary injunction against the video, saying the journalists were guilty of fraudulent business dealings. The injunction would have required the group to take its video off the Internet, but a judge denied it.

A month after his group released the footage, Daleiden said StemExpress attorneys approached him to reach a settlement.

“It was a very bad settlement,” Daleiden said. “They wanted us to take down the video, so of course we said, ‘No.’” A year later, the same attorneys requested to be removed from the case.

This month, the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives referred StemExpress for criminal investigation.

The Center for Medical Progress faces two additional lawsuits, one from Planned Parenthood and one from the National Abortion Federation.

The National Abortion Federation procured a federal judge’s gag order against what Daleiden said was roughly half of his group’s entire work taken during two of the federation’s annual meetings.

Daleiden expects a ruling in that case soon and said StemExpress’ abandonment of its lawsuit bodes well for his organization.

“I think that sends a really unmistakable message to Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation and all of their political cronies that they can’t win these lawsuits like this, that freedom of speech and the freedom of the citizen press to investigate and publish is a First Amendment freedom, and it’s not a form of fraud,” he said.