California Pro-Life Activists Cleared in Undercover Videos Case - CBN News

California Pro-Life Activists Cleared in Undercover Videos Case

07-26-2016

CBN News

The last remaining charge against two California pro-life activists has been dropped.

A Texas judge dismissed the tampering with government records charge against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, who made undercover videos allegedly implicating Planned Parenthood officials in arranging the illegal sale of fetal tissue to researchers for profit.

Prosecutors claimed Daleiden and Merritt used fake driver's licenses to hide their identities when dealing with Planned Parenthood.

Tuesday, District Judge Brock Thomas dismissed the charge at the request of the Harris County prosecutor's office.

"The dismissal of the bogus, politically motivated charges against CMP project lead David Daleiden and investigator Sandra Merritt is a resounding vindication of the First Amendment rights of all citizen journalists, and also a clear warning to any of Planned Parenthood's political cronies who would attack whistleblowers to protect Planned Parenthood from scrutiny," Daleiden said in a statement.

CBN News has been following the story surrounding Daleiden and Merritt. Read more: 

• Judge Dismisses Misdemeanor against David Daleiden in Planned Parenthood Case
• Planned Parenthood Lawyer Admits Illegally Receiving Evidence from DA in Daleiden Case
• Calif. Seizes Undercover Videos from Pro-Life Filmmaker's Home

Defense attorneys said Daleiden and Merritt, activists with The Center for Medical Progress, never should have been indicted.

"Today's dismissal in Houston is a huge win for the First Amendment rights of undercover journalists," Daleiden's attorney, Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society, said in a statement. "David Daleiden used standard undercover journalism techniques and followed all applicable laws in doing so."

"This meritless and retaliatory prosecution should never have been brought. Planned Parenthood did wrong here, not David Daleiden," Breen continued.

"We celebrate this victory for Sandra Merritt as she did nothing wrong," said Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, the organization representing Merritt. "She exposed the sale of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood and today she has been vindicated."  

"The indictment was politically motivated and should never have been filed in the first place," Staver continued.

Merritt and Daleiden could have been sentenced to up to 20 years in prison if they had been found guilty on the felony charge.

At first, Texas authorities launched a grand jury investigation of Planned Parenthood after the release of the undercover videos last August.

The grand jury ended up clearing Planned Parenthood of misusing fetal tissue and decided to indict Merritt and Daleiden.

NEW VIDEO: Planned Parenthood Auctions "Fetus" With Still-Beating Heart

NEW VIDEO: Planned Parenthood Auctions "Fetus" With Still-Beating Heart

 8/19/2015 PETER ROBBIO/CENTER FOR MEDICAL PROGRESS  charisma news

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The third episode in a new documentary web series and seventh video on Planned Parenthood's supply of aborted fetal tissue tells a former procurement technician's harrowing story of harvesting an intact brain from a late-term male fetus whose heart was still beating after the abortion.

The "Human Capital" documentary web series, produced by The Center for Medical Progress, integrates expert interviews, eyewitness accounts, and real-life undercover interactions to explore different themes within Planned Parenthood's sale of aborted fetal tissue. Episode 3, "Planned Parenthood's Custom Abortions for Superior Product," has launched.

The series focuses on the personal narrative of Holly O'Donnell, a former Blood and Tissue Procurement Technician for StemExpress, a biotech start-up that until last week was partnered with two large northern California Planned Parenthood affiliates to purchase their aborted fetus parts and resell them for scientific experimentation.

O'Donnell describes the harvesting, or "procurement," of organs from a nearly intact late-term fetus aborted at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte's Alameda clinic in San Jose, California. "'Want to see something kind of cool?'" O'Donnell says her supervisor asked her. "And she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I'm sitting here and I'm looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don't know what to think."

The San Jose Planned Parenthood does abortions up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. Referring to the beating heart of the aborted fetus, O'Donnell remarks, "I don't know if that constitutes it's technically dead, or it's alive."

State and federal law require that the same treatment be given to an infant born alive after an abortion as to a normally delivered baby (1 U.S.C. 8, CA Health and Safety Code 123435). California law also prohibits any kind of experimentation on a fetus with a discernible heartbeat (CA Health and Safety Code 123440). StemExpress has been cited in published scientific literature as a source of fetal hearts used for Langendorff perfusion, which keeps a heart beating after it is excised from the body.

O'Donnell also tells how her StemExpress supervisor instructed her to cut through the face of the fetus in order to get the brain. "She gave me the scissors and told me that I had to cut down the middle of the face. I can't even describe what that feels like," she says.

The video also features recordings of Dr. Ben Van Handel, the Executive Director of Novogenix Laboratories, LLC, and also of Perrin Larton, Procurement Manager of Advanced Bioscience Resources Inc. (ABR). Novogenix is the company that has harvested fetal organs from abortions done by Planned Parenthood Federation of America's senior director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, in Los Angeles, while ABR is the oldest fetal tissue procurement company and works with Planned Parenthood in San Diego and other clinics around the country. Van Handel admits, "There are times when after the procedure is done that the heart actually is still beating," and Larton describes abortions she has seen where "the fetus was already in the vaginal canal whenever we put her in the stirrups, it just fell out."

CMP's Project Lead David Daleiden notes, "Today's video contains heartrending admissions about the absolute barbarism of Planned Parenthood's abortion practice and baby parts sales in which fetuses are sometimes delivered intact and alive. Planned Parenthood is a criminal organization from the top down and should be immediately stripped of taxpayer funding and prosecuted for their atrocities against humanity."

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New Video Reveals Baby Harvesters 'Take What They Wanted..."

New Video Reveals Baby Harvesters 'Take What They Wanted and the Mothers Don't Know'

8/12/2015 PETER ROBBIO/CENTER FOR MEDICAL PROGRESS   charisma news

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The second episode in a new documentary web series highlights a young woman's eyewitness narrative of the daily practice of fetal body parts harvesting in Planned Parenthood abortion clinics, describing tissue procurement, workers' coordination with abortion providers, the pressure placed on patients, and disregard for patient consent.

The "Human Capital" documentary web series, produced by The Center for Medical Progress, integrates expert interviews, eyewitness accounts, and real-life undercover interactions to explore various themes connected to Planned Parenthood's sale of aborted fetal tissue. Episode 1, "Planned Parenthood's Black Market in Baby Parts," premiered last month. Episode 2, "Inside the Planned Parenthood Supply Site," launched this week.

The series follows the personal narrative of Holly O'Donnell, a former Blood and Tissue Procurement Technician for StemExpress, a start-up biotech company from northern California that partners with Planned Parenthood clinics to purchase their aborted fetus parts and resell them for scientific experimentation. As a procurement tech, O'Donnell's job was to identify pregnant patients matching the specifications of StemExpress customers and to harvest the fetal body parts from their abortions.

"It's not an option, it's a demand," StemExpress supervisors instructed O'Donnell about approaching pregnant women at Planned Parenthood for fetal tissue "donations." O'Donnell says the StemExpress techs working in Planned Parenthood clinics sometimes harvested fetal parts without obtaining consent from the patients: "If there was a higher gestation, and the technicians needed it, there were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don't know. And there's no way they would know."

Federal laws on the procurement and use of human fetal tissue require that patients consent to the tissue donation subsequent to consenting to the abortion procedure (42 U.S.C. 289g-1).

According to O'Donnell, Planned Parenthood gave StemExpress workers access to patient records and schedules so that the harvesting company could plan for the days when patient "supply" would be greatest. "They give you a sheet, and it's everybody for that day, who's coming in for an ultrasound, who's coming in for an abortion, medical or a late-term abortion," O'Donnell explains. Even patients just seeking a pregnancy test at Planned Parenthood were considered part of the supply: "Pregnancy tests are potential pregnancies, therefore potential specimens. So it's just taking advantage of the opportunities."

Project Lead David Daleiden notes, "Experiences like Holly O'Donnell's show that Planned Parenthood's abortion and baby parts business is not a safe place where vulnerable women can be cared for, but a harvesting ground for saleable human 'product.' Taxpayer subsidies to Planned Parenthood's barbaric abortion business should be revoked immediately, and law enforcement and other elected officials must act decisively to determine the full extent of Planned Parenthood's offensive practices and hold them accountable to the law."

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Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell Baby Parts

Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell Baby Parts - Video interview

7/14/2015 DAVID DALEIDEN  charisma news

Love For His People Editor's Note: the following video made me sick to listen to what they do to unborn babies.

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New undercover footage shows Planned Parenthood Federation of America Senior Director of Medical Services Dr. Deborah Nucatola describing how Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of aborted fetuses, and admitting she uses partial-birth abortions to supply intact body parts.

In the video, Nucatola is at a business lunch with actors posing as buyers from a human biologics company. As head of PPFA's Medical Services department, Nucatola has overseen medical practice at all Planned Parenthood locations since 2009. She also trains new Planned Parenthood abortion doctors and performs abortions herself at Planned Parenthood Los Angeles up to 24 weeks.

The buyers ask Nucatola, "How much of a difference can that actually make, if you know kind of what's expected, or what we need?"

"It makes a huge difference," Nucatola replies. "I'd say a lot of people want liver. And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they'll know where they're putting their forceps. The kind of rate-limiting step of the procedure is calvarium. Calvarium—the head—is basically the biggest part."

Nucatola explains, "We've been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, 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."

"And with the calvarium, in general, some people will actually try to change the presentation so that it's not vertex," she continues. "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 at the end."

Using ultrasound guidance to manipulate the fetus from vertex to breech orientation before intact extraction is the hallmark of the illegal partial-birth abortion procedure (18 U.S.C. 1531).

Nucatola also reveals that Planned Parenthood's national office is concerned about their liability for the sale of fetal parts: "At the national office, we have a Litigation and Law Department which just really doesn't want us to be the middle people for this issue right now," she says. "But I will tell you that behind closed doors these conversations are happening with the affiliates."

The sale or purchase of human fetal tissue is a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $500,000 (42 U.S.C. 289g-2).

A separate clip shows Planned Parenthood President and CEO Cecile Richards praising Nucatola's work to facilitate connections for fetal tissue collection. "Oh good," Richards says when told about Nucatola's support for fetal tissue collection at Planned Parenthood, "Great. She's amazing."

The video is the first by The Center for Medical Progress in its "Human Capital" series, a nearly 3-year-long investigative journalism study of Planned Parenthood's illegal trafficking of aborted fetal parts. Project Lead David Daleiden notes: "Planned Parenthood's criminal conspiracy to make money off of aborted baby parts reaches to the very highest levels of their organization. Elected officials must listen to the public outcry for Planned Parenthood to be held accountable to the law and for our tax dollars to stop underwriting this barbaric abortion business."

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