Breaking news has just been released out of California. David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, the undercover investigators behind the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) videos exposing the trafficking of baby body parts and other potentially illegal activities at Planned Parenthood, have been charged with 15 felony counts of invasion of privacy in the state of California.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra released a statement accusing Daleiden and Merritt of using “manufactured identities and a fictitious bioresearch company to meet women’s healthcare providers and covertly record the private discussions they initiated.” “The right to privacy is a cornerstone of California’s Constitution, and a right that is foundational in a free democratic society,” Becerra said. “We will not tolerate the criminal recording of confidential conversations.”
There’s a pretty significant problem with Becerra’s argument, though: Planned Parenthood President and CEO Cecile Richards herself admitted, under oath before Congress, that the recorded conversations were not confidential, as can be seen in the video below, in the exchange at the 1:07:26 mark.
The CMP videos revealed that Planned Parenthood executives and officials were trafficking the body parts of aborted babies. The investigation ignited a national controversy, with multiple congressional and state investigations opened, and state governments across the country voting to defund the abortion giant. After a year of congressional investigation, the U.S. House Select Panel on Infant Lives referred Planned Parenthood for prosecution.
Daleiden and Merritt responded to the felony charges by slamming them as “bogus charges.” Planned Parenthood, meanwhile, celebrated them. “Planned Parenthood has done nothing wrong, and the only people who broke the law are those behind the fraudulent tapes,” spokeswoman Mary Alice Carter said.
Yet in a statement, Daleiden pointed out that this tactic has been tried before — and failed miserably. “They tried the same collusion with corrupt officials in Houston, TX and failed: both the charges and the DA were thrown out,” Daleiden said. He continued:
The public knows the real criminals are Planned Parenthood and their business partners like StemExpress and DV Biologics—currently being prosecuted in California—who have harvested and sold aborted baby body parts for profit for years in direct violation of state and federal law. We look forward to showing the entire world what is on our yet-unreleased video tapes of Planned Parenthood’s criminal baby body parts enterprise, in vindication of the First Amendment rights of all.
In Texas, the decision to charge Daleiden and Merritt was almost immediately met with criticism, especially considering that prosecutor Lauren Reeder was found to be a Planned Parenthood director and affiliate board member. Planned Parenthood’s attorney also boasted that the district attorney’s office was sharing information with them. The DA’s office chose to charge Daleiden and Merritt with attempting to purchase body parts, and, similar to the charges in California, charged them with using fake identification. The same office refused to charge Planned Parenthood with selling the body parts, and reports said that the grand jury did not, in fact, even consider charges for Planned Parenthood, despite indicating to the public that they would. The corruption and double standard in Texas did not win, however, and all charges against Daleiden and Merritt were ultimately dismissed.
Despite the legal challenges against them, the Center for Medical Progress is not backing down from exposing Planned Parenthood’s illegal and unethical behavior. A new video has just been released, featuring DeShawn Taylor. Taylor is an abortionist who has her own abortion facility in Arizona, Desert Star Family Planning, and has formerly worked as the medical director for Planned Parenthood Arizona and as an abortionist who dealt with fetal parts buyer, Novagenix, at Planned Parenthood Los Angeles. In the new video, Taylor discusses late-term abortions, how the number of elective late-term abortions she performs is increasing, how she would rather refuse to check for signs of life in aborted babies, and how she does not want to send the babies’ bodies to be buried or cremated. It can be “creepy,” she admits.
Sickeningly, Taylor also spoke about how delivering babies intact made it easier to harvest their organs, but acknowledged that doing so made the procedure harder… because the baby looks like a baby. “It’s not a matter of how I feel about it coming out intact, but I’ve got to worry about my staff, and you know, people’s feeling about it, coming out looking like a baby,” she said.
Daleiden and Merritt were found to be innocent of the charges against them in Texas, and the same should happen in California. Instead of punishing them for exposing Planned Parenthood’s horrific activities, California officials should be investigating and charging the real criminals: the officials caught on tape agreeing to repeatedly break the law.
Live Action President Lila Rose responded to the charges:
Using state power to attack citizen journalists who expose crimes against the defenseless is a severe miscarriage of justice.
The real criminal is Planned Parenthood, not David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. The Center for Medical Progress did a tremendous service by exposing the barbaric baby parts trafficking that Planned Parenthood had kept hidden behind closed doors. They should be lauded for their brave work, not punished.
California’s last two pro-abortion attorneys general have yet to investigate Planned Parenthood after two congressional committees found significant evidence that it may have broken the law with its baby parts trafficking scheme. Similar charges against David and Sandra were dropped in Texas months ago, yet Mr. Becerra insists on punishing them and putting his political agenda ahead of the laws that he was sworn to uphold.
