After the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released more than a dozen videos showing Planned Parenthood (PP) orchestrated the illegal sale of aborted baby parts, two congressional committees examined the federally funded organization and multiple states have defunded it. While this has certainly lodged a thorn in PP’s side, even a GOP-controlled Congress and administration continue to fail to remove PP’s $500,000 annual federal subsidy despite campaign promises to the contrary. Yet CMP project lead David Daleiden is about to push that thorn a little deeper into PP’s greedy, murderous flesh.
At the Values Voters Summit in Washington DC last weekend, Daleiden spoke to an eager audience about the effects of his first string of investigative videos on PP and the country’s pro-choice views. From committee investigations to defunding efforts, the videos resulted in bad publicity, less funding, and even in some cases, shuttered facilities.
No Number of Lawyers Can Hide the Truth
But as much as Planned Parenthood would like to be done with Daleiden, he’s not done with them. He previewed a new video series that will be released soon. It profiles Holly O’Donnell, a brave whistleblower who worked as a procurement technician for StemExpress, harvesting aborted baby body parts inside Planned Parenthood facilities in California. Disgusted with their business model, she eventually quit and told her story to Daleiden and CMP.
Not only do the videos detail how the procurement and sale of aborted baby parts worked when O’Donnell was employed at StemExpress, she describes how that company heavily coordinated with PP and its affiliates to make sure both could continue the profitable work of harvesting human parts through abortion, an illegal activity.
The video series, which sounds as explosive as it does nauseating, is sure to incur the wrath of pro-choice advocates everywhere, particularly in light of how powerful Daleiden’s first set of videos were, and despite the legal charges he incurred. Those investigative reports show conversations between top Planned Parenthood executives at the National Abortion Federation’s annual trade shows, which detailed their efforts harvesting baby parts.
The new StemExpress videos will be equally powerful because they will debunk the oft-cited myth that PP simply performed abortions and happened to donate baby parts to “science.” Instead, it provides evidence that PP purposely performed abortions in such a way so they could harvest as many organs as possible, in accordance to what StemExpress happened to be in the market for each day.
Legal Teams Target CMP and Daleiden
That Daleiden is continuing to release investigative videos is quite remarkable, considering the subject matter and the personal costs. For weeks after CMP released the initial set of investigative videos, the mainstream media struggled to report, and in some cases completely ignored, the controversial content, despite their typical appetite for horror stories. Eventually, most outlets picked up the story, since it was too ghoulish and shocking to ignore forever.
After the original investigative videos, Daleiden released another string of videos showing footage from National Abortion Federation conventions. In 2015, the National Abortion Federation sued CMP and Daleiden for this, alleging privacy violations. Earlier this year, 14 felony charges were filed against him and a colleague in the state of California, where Daleiden and CMP reside, for supposedly recording “confidential communications.” Judge William Orrick put a gag order on Daleiden’s videos.
When his attorneys released the videos anyway, on grounds they were public evidence due to the court case, Orrick held them all in contempt of court. In May, Daleiden’s videos from the National Abortion Federation conventions disappeared from YouTube due to the injunction.
By summer’s end, Orrick found Daleiden and his attorneys, Steve Cooley and Brentford Ferreira, liable for $195,359, supposedly to compensate the National Abortion Federation for legal fees and increased security. Daleiden and CMP filed a petition for a writ of certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court, appealing the gag order as unconstitutional. The petition argues that no federal court has ever upheld a prior restraint like Orrick’s gag order to suppress speech of overwhelming public interest:
Judge Orrick’s gag order, issued at the behest of Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation, is an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment by a clearly biased federal judge. Judge Orrick even wants to press his gag order in the California Attorney General’s bogus criminal case against me—though he, NAF, and Planned Parenthood insist the gag order only applies to my defense, and not to the Attorney General’s bogus prosecution.
It’s worth noting that Orrick is not only pro-choice but helped fund a Planned Parenthood Northern California clinic inside the center’s headquarters. A motion to disqualify Orrick due to the obvious conflict of interest is still pending.
Despite These Roadblocks, the Videos Continue to Roll
Despite the unimaginable backlash Daleiden received from the first set of videos, he’s not backing down. During his speech at the Values Voters Summit, Daleiden was informative and calm yet inspiring and enthusiastic.
“If we keep steady, we can win,” he told the crowd, who cheered in response. “And we will win, because no matter how much blood money Planned Parenthood rakes in, no matter how high-placed their political cronies, no matter how smooth and glittering their meticulously-crafted deceptions, we have something Planned Parenthood and their abortion empire will never have: we have our core values of human equality and human dignity.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all human beings are created equal, that our lives are a blessing and not a curse, that each new little member of the human family is an asset and not a liability.”
