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A majority of Americans reject subsidizing the abortion industry with taxpayer money, and today the Trump Administration showed decisive leadership by enforcing longstanding law against spending Title X funds on programs where abortion is a method of family planning. CMP submitted key facts about the entanglement of Planned Parenthood abortion programs and public funding during HHS’ comment period, and we applaud the Trump Administration’s groundbreaking move to stop forcing taxpayers to prop up Planned Parenthood’s abortion empire. On the heels of this victory, HHS should continue this good work and end its unethical and illegal experimentation with aborted baby body parts, and the U.S. Department of Justice must do its job and hold Planned Parenthood and their business partners accountable to the law against selling aborted baby parts for profit.

Tonight, President Trump drew a clear line that he is squarely on the side of Life and will fight abortion and infanticide. He called on Congress to stop the barbaric late-term abortions of healthy, beautiful children performed daily by Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry. Promoting common sense, consensus pro-life policies such as withdrawing taxpayer subsidies from the abortion industry and cracking down on the criminal trafficking of baby body parts is a cause both Democrats and Republicans could and should support. The U.S. Departments of Justice and of Health and Human Services should follow the President’s lead and do their job to enforce the law against partial-birth abortion and the sale of baby body parts.

“The video camera doesn’t lie: CMP’s undercover video series caught Planned Parenthood’s top leaders openly admitting to selling baby body parts for profit in violation of federal law. Tonight, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals vindicated our citizen journalism work by debunking Planned Parenthood’s smear that the videos were ‘heavily edited’ or ‘doctored.’ The Court ruled that Texas may strip Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer subsidies, finding that Planned Parenthood uses criminal partial-birth abortions to sell baby parts. Now, it is time for the U.S. Department of Justice to do its job and hold Planned Parenthood accountable to the law.”

MEDIA ADVISORY: DAVID DALEIDEN, UNDERCOVER PLANNED PARENTHOOD VIDEOS, KEYNOTE AT MARCH FOR LIFE CONFERENCE

Contact: Matille Thebolt, mthebolt@crcpublicrelations.com, 703.683.5004

WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 17—David Daleiden, founder and project lead at The Center for Medical Progress, responsible for the groundbreaking undercover video series that recorded top-level Planned Parenthood abortion providers and executives callously negotiating the harvesting and sale of aborted fetal body parts, will deliver the keynote address at the March for Life 2019 Conferenceat 9 A.M. at the Renaissance Washington DC Downtown.

Daleiden’s keynote will reflect on the 2019 March for Life theme “Unique from Day One” and highlight how CMP’s undercover videos provide vivid confirmation from Planned Parenthood’s highest levels that the unborn children killed by abortion are human beings, and these revelations demand that American abortion laws and policies take into account the human equality and dignity of the prenatal child.

Selections from Daleiden’s prepared remarks are below:

“Many people have acknowledged since the release of these undercover videos that Planned Parenthood’s ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mantra about their abortion business is forever gone. The body parts are only valuable for Planned Parenthood and their business partners to sell precisely because the aborted children they are harvested from are human beings just like we are.”

“CMP’s undercover journalism prompted two major Congressional investigations, one at the Senate Judiciary Committee and the other at the House Select Investigative Panel, which corroborated all the main allegations against Planned Parenthood and found even deeper ‘systematic violations’ of the law in Planned Parenthood’s baby body parts programs. The committees made over a dozen criminal and regulatory referrals for PPFA, some of the biggest Planned Parenthood affiliates in the country, and their business partners. Those entities remain under active investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice. Planned Parenthood’s business partners the Da Vinci companies already pled guilty in a $7.8 million settlement with a southern California district attorney, and the D.A. credited CMP’s undercover reporting with prompting the successful prosecution.”

“The pro-life Trump Administration has begun enforcing the law to prevent nearly $60 million in taxpayer money from being funneled through the Title X program to support Planned Parenthood’s abortion business each year.”

“The results of CMP’s videos, such as the Congressional findings and ongoing DOJ investigation, the full enforcement of HHS authorizing statutes to stop subsidizing Planned Parenthood’s abortion business with taxpayer funds, and HHS’s reevaluation of its fetal experimentation programs, show how these videos are continuing to have an impact that is devastating to Planned Parenthood’s abortion business and the industry at large. It’s no wonder that Planned Parenthood and their political allies have retaliated viciously because of it—they are weaponizing the legal system and attacking the First Amendment in order to cover up for their crimes and prop up state-sponsored, industrial-scale child killing.”

“Three years ago, Planned Parenthood filed a massive lawsuit against me in federal court in front of a judge they had long been friends with—and I told them ‘Bring it on.’ Today, they are backing away from producing any of their ‘witnesses’ for cross examination—their own leadership from the undercover videos—for fear of what they might admit to under oath.”

“At the Preliminary Hearing scheduled next month in Planned Parenthood and Kamala Harris’ bogus case against me in San Francisco state court, the leaders and architects of Planned Parenthood’s abortion empire will either admit their criminality under oath, or they will commit perjury trying to cover it up.” 

Documents from the slides shown in Daleiden’s presentation are available here.

The two-week-long, public Preliminary Hearing in State of California v. Daleiden (No. 02502505) will be held in San Francisco Superior Court, February 19—March 4.

The first sworn deposition of a Planned Parenthood witness in the PPFA et al vs. CMP et al federal lawsuit (3:16-cv-00236) is scheduled for January 29.

MEDIA ADVISORY:

CMP RETAINS HARMEET DHILLON TO SEEK RELEASE OF CENSORED VIDEOS AT NINTH CIRCUIT

David Daleiden and The Center for Medical Progress, responsible for the series of undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood leaders callously negotiating the harvesting and sale of aborted baby body parts, have retained the accomplished San Francisco First Amendment lawyer Harmeet Dhillon to seek the repeal of a federal injunction censoring dozens of hours of unreleased undercover footage.

On Wednesday, Harmeet Dhillon helped file an expedited appeal at the Ninth Circuit, arguing for the total dissolution of Judge William Orrick III’s preliminary injunction against the videos, and for the speech-suppressing lawsuit brought by the Planned Parenthood-sponsored National Abortion Federation to be thrown out of federal court.

David Daleiden, CMP project lead, states:
“CMP’s videos caught Planned Parenthood’s leadership and business partners turning baby body parts into a cash crop, leading to a successful prosecution in southern California and an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice investigation. Now even the NIH and biotech researchers at the highest levels are divesting from the commercial exploitation of aborted baby parts. The facts prove Judge Orrick was wrong to suppress the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood’s illicit trade in baby body parts, and the only reason to do so was to cloak this barbaric industry from public and government scrutiny.”

Daleiden and CMP are also represented by the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund (FCDF), the Thomas More Society, and Steve Cooley & Associates.

Harmeet Dhillon of Dhillon Law Group states:
“The fundamental First Amendment principles implicated by a multi-year gag order barring truthful speech about a matter of public interest cannot be overstated. While the plaintiffs in this case are free to personally attack, persecute in the courts, and even defame, our clients are gagged by an injunction not supported by law or fact, from defending themselves. We are confident that if the 9th Circuit examines the merits of these arguments, NAF and its members’ threadbare case should be dismissed from federal court altogether, or the injunction dissolved.”

Charles LiMandri of Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund (FCDF) notes:
“The National Abortion Federation is waging lawfare to destroy David. We hope the Ninth Circuit concludes that the First Amendment protects David’s right to shine a light on the billion-dollar abortion industry’s illegal selling of baby body parts.”

Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society states:
“The past three years of Congressional investigations and successful prosecutions definitively prove the truth and merit of David Daleiden’s undercover journalism project. There is no basis consistent with the First Amendment to conceal David’s videos from the public. It’s well past time that every American be allowed to see the full breadth of the abortion industry’s crimes committed in connection with the sales of baby body parts.”

Key Points:

• CMP asked Judge Orrick to dissolve the injunction based on new facts disproving his prior findings and the use of the videos in the state criminal case superseding the injunction in the lawsuit, or to dismiss the NAF case entirely because of the lack of federal jurisdiction. Judge Orrick refused to consider the new facts or developments, and purported to order the state criminal court to follow his civil injunction on the videos.

• Over the summer, NAF dropped all of its federal claims, leaving only a meritless state law dispute between California-based CMP and several California abortion providers and Planned Parenthood offices, and erasing federal jurisdiction over the case.

• Three years ago, Judge Orrick blocked CMP’s undercover videos of discussions with Planned Parenthood leadership filmed at NAF’s annual meetings, based on NAF’s representation that CMP’s undercover work had not found any wrongdoing, and allegations that the videos placed NAF members under threat. In the past three years, Judge Orrick’s findings have been proven false.

• Two Congressional investigations prompted by CMP’s videos confirmed serious wrongdoing and “systematic violations” in Planned Parenthood and NAF’s fetal body parts supply, yielding over a dozen criminal and regulatory referrals, now being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice. A California District Attorney specifically credited CMP’s undercover work with prompting his successful prosecution of Planned Parenthood business partners the DaVinci companies for selling fetal tissue for profit, which the companies admitted in a $7.8 million settlement.

• Planned Parenthood has admitted since the injunction was issued that CMP’s videos are not responsible for any violent threat to abortion providers, and NAF’s own statistics published since the injunction shows no increase in actual threats to NAF members attributable to the videos.

• Since the injunction, the California Attorney General has brought a legally unsupported prosecution against David Daleiden based on the California video recording law, at the behest of Planned Parenthood and many NAF members. The undercover videos blocked by Judge Orrick are now key evidence in the criminal case.

• Judge Orrick is an Obama appointee who previously helped found, fund, and operate a Planned Parenthood clinic in San Francisco. A separate motion from CMP is pending to remove Orrick from the case.

 

From the Appeal Filing:

“The passage of years has not cast this fundamentally flawed injunction in any better light; to the contrary, intervening developments have only highlighted its legal and factual deficiencies.”

“That the District Court refused even to engage in the reconsideration requested with good cause by Appellants constitutes an abuse of discretion warranting reversal. It is also more evidence of the District Court’s bias and the impossibility that Appellants can receive a fair hearing in the District Court.“

“Three years later, NAF cannot legally or factually sustain the extraordinary prior restraint on Appellants’ speech, which should lead this Court to dissolve the preliminary injunction.”

“This lawsuit is the quintessential Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation: a well-funded abortion industry trade organization aggressively attacking a small group of critics who had the audacity to record and publish unflattering information about the unseemly, and illegal, activities of its members.”

“Having no actual federal claims nor any meritorious state ones, NAF is nevertheless pursuing this federal lawsuit against Appellants in the hopes of bullying them into forfeiting their First Amendment rights.“

“The preliminary injunction is now obsolete because facts discovered since February 2016 have given the lie to the District Court’s findings regarding the likelihood of harm to NAF, while other intervening developments have shifted the balance of the various public interests sharply in Appellants’ favor.”

“The District Court’s refusal to give meaningful consideration to Appellants’ motion to dissolve the extraordinary indefinite prior restraint on their constitutionally-protected speech violated both the spirit and letter of the Constitution.“

“Congressional committees issued hundreds of pages of detailed reports consistent with CMP’s public videos showing extensive evidence of criminal, unlawful, and unethical acts by abortion providers and fetal tissue procurement companies. And those findings have yielded at least one successful prosecution of a pair of fetal tissue procurement companies so far.”

“The District Court’s refusal to credit decisive counterevidence to one of its factual findings was an abuse of discretion.”

“For the District Court to give weight to a heckler’s veto—i.e., for it to consider the prospect of harassment, threats, or violence from third parties completely unrelated to Appellants—in severing Appellants’ First Amendment rights was constitutionally illegitimate. See Santa Monica Nativity Scene Comm. v. City of Santa Monica, 784 F.3d 1286, 1292–93 (9th Cir. 2015); Ctr. for Bio-Ethical Reform, Inc. v. Los Angeles Cty. Sheriff Dep’t, 533 F.3d 780, 788–90 (9th Cir. 2008); see ER490-91.”

“The District Court’s dismissiveness of Mr. Daleiden’s state criminal proceeding extends not only to the criminal defendant but also to his counsel and even to the state criminal court itself.”

“The District Court’s ostensibly deferential language is in fact laden with legal and factual determinations that the federal court expects the state court to make in light of the federal court’s injunction—and in clear violation of federalism principles.“

“To characterize such obvious marching orders as something other than federal court interference in a state court proceeding is impossible.”

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To learn more about CMP, visit CenterforMedicalProgress.org

Last week, The Center for Medical Progress filed a petition for certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit retaliating against CMP’s undercover videos exposing the sale of aborted baby body parts. The case raises serious First Amendment concerns regarding the selective application of California’s anti-SLAPP law and other free speech protections:

1) anti-SLAPP laws protect citizen journalists from “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation”–SLAPP cases that are brought solely to retaliate against a public speaker.

2) David Daleiden and The Center for Medical Progress should be protected by California’s anti-SLAPP law against the bogus SLAPP cases brought by Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation, but the Ninth Circuit reversed its own established precedent in order to deny David and CMP the protections of the California anti-SLAPP law.

3) To protect the First Amendment, federal courts require claims against free speech to meet a strict defamation standard, which Planned Parenthood and NAF have refused to do. Even apart from California’s anti-SLAPP law, this should terminate the lawsuits immediately.

CMP project lead David Daleiden says, “Planned Parenthood got caught selling baby parts from abortions and remains under federal investigation–so they have relentlessly attacked the whistleblower instead of coming clean and reforming. This is a classic, meritless SLAPP case and a dishonest attack on the First Amendment that should have been thrown out of court long ago.”

CMP Attorney Charles LiMandri of the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund (FCDF), who filed the petition with the Supreme Court, notes: “The billion-dollar abortion industry is stopping at nothing to crush David. The anti-SLAPP laws are designed for cases just like David’s, yet the Ninth Circuit chose to side with the abortionists rather than uphold the law. We hope the Supreme Court recognizes that David should not be punished for exercising his First Amendment rights.”

From CMP’s Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court:

“In this high-profile, politically-charged matter, the Ninth Circuit has flip-flopped on its own earlier decision, choosing now to deny disfavored speech the special protection to which it is entitled under state law.”

“The Court should review the decisions below and hold that the First Amendment bars Plaintiffs’ claims.”

“Defendants’ investigation and reporting to law enforcement so far has led to successful lawsuits by the Orange County District Attorney against two companies for trafficking in fetal organs. It also has resulted in the ongoing federal Department of Justice investigation of PPFA.”

“The lower courts held that PPFA had a legally-protectable commercial interest in what amounts to squelching future scrutiny of it.”

“The lower courts’ analyses paid no attention to the First Amendment concerns at issue, and instead of engaging in the appropriate scrutiny of PPFA’s case to ensure that no end run was being tolerated, summarily affirmed a novel theory aimed precisely at circumventing the First Amendment.”

“Just like the statutory law at issue in Nat’l Inst. of Family & Life Advocates, the case law announced by the lower courts in this case, “imperils th[e] liberties” of “freedom of thought and belief.” Id. (Kennedy, J., con- curring). This Court should grant review to protect those liberties.”

Today, CMP submitted evidence to a federal judge in Oakland that Planned Parenthood and their business partners may have doctored records about their revenues from the sale of aborted fetal body parts and lied to Congress about them. CMP is asking the Court to force Planned Parenthood and their suspect business partners Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) to produce the key original records from their baby body parts harvesting programs. CMP’s filing with the Court, based on sealed documents reflecting Planned Parenthood’s invoices for payment for aborted baby parts, notes that both ABR and Planned Parenthood produced what purported to be the same set of invoices, “but they produced different versions of the same invoice.” Additionally, “the revenue totals and procurement totals” for fetal body parts “do not match” the totals that Planned Parenthood reported to Congressional investigations two years ago. The filing asks the Court “to verify that [Planned Parenthood] are not producing fabricated evidence.”

CMP’s project lead David Daleiden states, “The glaring discrepancies in Planned Parenthood’s alleged documentation of their baby body parts revenues call into question every statement Planned Parenthood has ever made in defense of their abortion harvesting programs. This would not be the first time Planned Parenthood has apparently doctored critical evidence about their own wrongdoing. Planned Parenthood has everything to lose if the full scope of their illicit trade in aborted baby body parts is revealed, and when the Congressional investigations made criminal referrals of Planned Parenthood and their business partners for selling baby parts, the House Select Panel had to refer Planned Parenthood partner StemExpress for evidence destruction. As the U.S. Department of Justice continues to follow up on the criminal referrals for Planned Parenthood and ABR, it is imperative for prosecutors to seize the original financial records from Planned Parenthood and their accomplices immediately, so these depraved enterprises cannot continue to cover up their criminal sale of baby body parts.”

From page 15 of the Court filing:

ABR did produce some documents in response to an earlier subpoena. Both ABR and Plaintiffs produced the invoices which ABR submitted to Plaintiffs PPPSW and PPMM. The PPMM invoices produced match, but ABR and PPPSW produced different versions of the same invoice. Compare Exs. 32, 33, with Exs. 34, 35. Further, the revenue totals and procurement totals, when added up based on the invoices produced by ABR and Plaintiff PPPSW, do not match the totals that PPPSW reported to the Select Investigative Panel for fiscal year 2015. See Dkt. 306 at 712; Dkt 307 at 307 (316 products of conception for $18,960).(9) However the ABR fetal tissue invoices for July 2014 to December 2014 alone—half of fiscal year 2015—show revenues of $21,120 from ABR for 352 fetal tissue donations. It is unclear to Defendants why the invoices are not identical, or why the numbers do not add up, but it is perfectly possible that the invoices were subject to tampering and someone falsely reported information to Congress. See Dkt. 303-3 at 183–92 (Referral of StemExpress, LLC to the U.S. Department of Justice for prosecution for destroying documents in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1519). Thus, it is critical that Defendants obtain access to third-party documents to verify that Plaintiffs are not producing fabricated evidence.

(9) PPPSW’s fiscal year, as reported on its 2015 form 990, is July 1 to June 30.

HHS was right to terminate a contract for “fresh” aborted fetal organs and tissues with Planned Parenthood-linked Advanced Bioscience Resources, and to launch a “comprehensive review” of all HHS experimentation with aborted baby body parts. However, these are only small first steps to stop the epidemic of taxpayer-funded trafficking in tiny baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains taking place in government-run HHS laboratories. CMP has now filed a detailed Freedom of Information Act request to obtain all the relevant facts about the $100 million in taxpayer money spent on HHS’ most recent round of baby parts contracts, and to hold this government agency accountable for the number of aborted American children it has sought to purchase for taxpayer-funded experimentation.

The Center for Medical Progress releases the following statement on the announcement this evening that HHS is terminating a contract signed in July with Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) for “fresh” aborted fetal organs and tissues. CMP founder and project lead David Daleiden remarks:

So long as HHS trades taxpayer dollars for freshly-aborted baby body parts, the U.S. government is setting its own abortion quotas and sending the message that these children are worth more dead than alive. By terminating a grotesque contract for “fresh” aborted baby parts from Planned Parenthood’s business partners ABR that never should have been signed in the first place, HHS has taken a small first step to stop the epidemic of trafficking tiny baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains from late-term abortion clinics into government-sponsored laboratories for taxpayer-funded experimentation. HHS’s mission to “serve all Americans from conception to natural death” cannot permit trafficking unborn children to stitch their body parts into lab rats.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that ABR was one of multiple entities under federal investigation for the illegal sale of baby body parts for profit based on criminal referrals by two Congressional committees. Now that HHS has found cause for termination of ABR’s continuing baby body parts sales, DOJ must do its job and follow through on the criminal referrals for ABR, Planned Parenthood, and similar entities with vigorous prosecution.

HHS’s newly-announced review of fetal tissue procurement and experimentation must be exacting, and it must terminate all other agreements for baby body parts with ABR, StemExpress, and similar business partners with Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry. HHS should provide 110% transparency about the extent of taxpayer-funded harvesting from and experimentation on unborn children, and to this end, CMP will file a federal Freedom of Information Act request in the coming days to surface all the relevant facts and details about the $100 million in taxpayer money spent on HHS’s most recent round of baby body parts contracts and projects.