FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
UNDERCOVER FILMMAKER SUES PLANNED PARENTHOOD FOR CALLING FETAL BODY PARTS VIDEOS “FAKE”
Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in Press Statements and on Twitter, Claimed Undercover Videos “Manufacture a Fake” and “Created a False Smear Campaign”
Contact: David Daleiden, media@centerformedicalprogress.org, 949.734.0859
NEW YORK, September 17–The Center for Medical Progress and its founder David Daleiden, responsible for the 2015 undercover video series exposing top Planned Parenthood leadership negotiating the harvesting and sale of aborted fetal body parts, are suing Planned Parenthood Federation of America for defamation in New York federal court after PPFA falsely and repeatedly accused the filmmakers of “manufacture[d]”, “fake”, and “false” undercover video reporting.
In sworn deposition testimony in 2019, top Planned Parenthood officials admitted that their own actual statements were captured by the undercover video recordings. PPFA itself stipulated during a federal court trial that the words used by Planned Parenthood officials in the undercover videos “were spoken by those persons”.
Yet on September 18, 2019, PPFA issued a press statement claiming Daleiden and CMP filmed and published undercover video “to manufacture a fake smear campaign against Planned Parenthood”. On November 15, 2019, PPFA tweeted that Daleiden and CMP “created a false smear campaign against Planned Parenthood”.
After 30 months of undercover work, CMP began releasing its undercover video footage of documenting Planned Parenthood and its business partners’ participation in the harvesting and sale of human fetuses and their body parts from abortions. With each video release, CMP posted the full footage of the conversation with the Planned Parenthood representative, alongside a shorter summary version presenting the most significant parts of the conversation.
In the first video release, PPFA’s then Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, suggested prices “per-specimen” of fetal tissue, and advised that in her Planned Parenthood clinics, “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.” Dr. Nucatola also described using ultrasound guidance to flip the position of a living fetus to feet-first in order to extract the fetus whole, remarking, “So if you do it starting from the breech presentation, there’s dilation that happens as the case goes on, and often, the last step, you can evacuate an intact calvarium [head] at the end,” and concluding, “We’ve been pretty successful with that, I’d say.”
The U.S. Department of Justice announced three years ago it had opened a federal investigation of Planned Parenthood and its business partners for selling fetal tissue based on criminal referrals from Congress, prompted by CMP’s undercover videos. Two of Planned Parenthood’s business partners in Orange County, CA then admitted guilt for illegally selling aborted tissue from Planned Parenthood in a $7.8 million settlement, and the Orange County District Attorney credited CMP’s undercover reporting with prompting the successful case. In September 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services terminated its contracts with Planned Parenthood partner Advanced Bioscience Resources because it could not be “sufficiently assured” that ABR’s supply complied with the federal law against selling fetal tissue (42 U.S.C. 289g-2). In January 2019, the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled based on forensic analysis that CMP’s undercover footage was accurate, authentic, reliable evidence that Planned Parenthood committed partial-birth abortions and changed abortions in order to sell fetal tissue.
CMP president David Daleiden states, “Planned Parenthood admits my videos are true when under oath in federal court, but when speaking to the public, Planned Parenthood lies and calls the videos fake. I have put my life on hold for five years to report, with video evidence, the trafficking of aborted infants that I and others witnessed at the highest levels of Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry. It is time for Planned Parenthood to face the truth.”
Harmeet Dhillon, counsel for Daleiden and CMP, notes, “Planned Parenthood has tremendous power and influence in our society. But even it must adhere to legal norms. We filed this lawsuit to hold PPFA accountable for damaging falsehoods it uttered concerning our clients’ groundbreaking journalism that exposed shocking practices it would rather keep hidden — for good reason. Planned Parenthood is not above the law. We look forward to the merits litigation of this lawsuit.”
“Instead of coming clean about its ruthless pursuit of profit from selling the remains of aborted children, Planned Parenthood tried to smear David Daleiden, the man who blew the whistle on its dirty secret,” says Peter Breen, Vice President and Senior Counsel for the Thomas More Society, representing Daleiden. “In its earlier lawsuit against David and the Center for Medical Progress, Planned Parenthood fought to avoid scrutiny of its illegal fetal tissue trafficking. This new lawsuit puts Planned Parenthood’s grisly business practices front and center, to prove the truth of the conclusions of David’s investigation, which were also confirmed and echoed by the United States Congress and other government officials.”
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To watch CMP’s undercover video series, visit: centerformedicalprogress.org/cmp/investigative-footage
Learn more about Planned Parenthood’s admissions under oath here: https://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/fetal-trafficking-under-oath/
To learn more about CMP, visit: CenterforMedicalProgress.org
