Federal judge extends restraining order against Center for Medical Progress

In a hearing this afternoon in San Francisco, U.S. District Judge William Orrick, said he will extend the ban on the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), preventing it from releasing any videos that show information about the National Abortion Federation. ABC News reports:

A federal judge in San Francisco has extended a restraining order that blocks an anti-abortion group from releasing any recordings that it secretly gathered at annual meetings of an abortion providers’ association.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick on Monday sided with claims by the National Abortion Federation and its members that they would suffer harassment, intimidation and even violence if the Center for Medical Progress was permitted to circulate the material.

Judge Orrick initially issued a restraining order Friday, just hours after the NAF filed for it. He expressly prohibited CMP from releasing any videos, documents of other materials that may have come from CMP’s contact with NAF officials, including dates and locations of future NAF meetings. Orrick said in the restraining order:

Based on the record before me, I find that NAF is likely to prevail on the merits of its claims, the balance of hardships tips in its favor, NAF would be likely to suffer irreparable injury, absent an ex parte temporary restraining order, in the form of harassment,  intimidation, violence, invasion of privacy, and injury to reputation, and the requested relief is in the public interest.

What Orrick did not reveal is that he is an Obama appointee who raised $200,000 for Obama and donated $30,800 to committees supporting him. And he certainly didn’t offer what The Federalist reported today: His wife is an abortion advocate and partners with him on political matters. The story says about Caroline “Linie” Farrow Orrick:

Her YouTube user page shows that the first video she ever “liked” was from an extreme pro-abortion group called the Center for Reproductive Justice. The slick, celebrity-laden video called for people to sign a “bill of rights” that asserts a right to abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy, a position shared by very few Americans. It further calls for taxpayer funding of contraception, abortifacients and abortion. And, finally, it says that all health care plans should be required under penalty of law to cover abortion, abortifacients, and other anti-reproductive services — even if they have religious objections such as those held by the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Orrick’s order seems to be a one-man show where the judge is also in cahoots philosophically with the organization filing the restraining order request. As a man charged with upholding the law impartially, he should recuse himself from any matters relating to this issue in which he has a personal interest, which is a clear conflict of interest.

Meanwhile, CMP is under one other restraining order limiting it from releasing any videos with StemExpress officials in it; however, the rest of their footage is fair game, and many expect more videos soon.