Fight erupted over undercover videos exposing sale of baby body parts
Abortion is heading back to the Supreme Court.
There, justices last year abandoned the faulty 1973 ruling that created a national right to abortion, letting states resume regulating the nation’s abortion industry state by state.
But there still remain unresolved fights.
And one of them is over the 2015 undercover videos obtained by the Center for Medical Progress that revealed abortionists’ profit motive for destroying the unborn.
One infamously said she wanted to be paid more for the body parts because she wanted a Lamborghini.
Now it is the American Center for Law and Justice that explained it is returning to the high court.
It as been representing Troy Newman, who was a board member of the CMP at the time, since 2016, when Planned Parenthood sued.
“The abortion giant sued after CMP had released videos from its undercover investigation that exposed some of Planned Parenthood’s horrendous abortion practices. The videos led to congressional investigations and congressional referrals for criminal prosecutions over the sale of aborted babies’ body parts,” the ACLJ reported.
The case was in the trial court for years, where evidence “included an abortion doctor admitting the use of specific techniques during abortion procedures to keep certain baby organs intact, and another stating that she ‘wanted a Lamborghini’ during discussion of prices for the sale of those organs,” the ACLJ said.
The trial court, however, run by a judge who participated in a community center that supported an abortion business, told the jury to ignore significant evidence.
“The court instead instructed the jury to focus only on defendants’ investigative techniques and methods. The jury ultimately found the defendants liable to Planned Parenthood and returned a verdict of more than $2 million in damages, even though the truth of the videos was not challenged and Planned Parenthood did not assert a defamation claim.”
The ACLJ said, “The jury’s verdict and various rulings issued by the trial court are contrary to the law and the evidence. The ACLJ appealed the unjust verdict to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on behalf of our client. Over the last couple of years, we have filed appellate briefs advancing our client’s claims and responding to Planned Parenthood’s arguments. Multiple friend-of-the-court briefs (amicus briefs) were filed in support of the arguments that we and the other defendants have made. Oral argument was held in the case last spring.”
A panel at that court initially ruled for Planned Parenthood, despite being presented with information about the lower court’s “absurd finding” that undercover investigators interviewing abortionists were a “racketeering enterprise.”
Now the appeals court has rejected a request for a rehearing, so the next step is a request to the Supreme Court for review.
In addition to the civil judgment orchestrated by a Planned Parenthood-linked judge, the state of California, through its then-attorney general, Xavier Becerra, has accused the journalists, David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, of being criminals.
Those claims have been described as “unprecedented for citizen journalists.”
The trial in district court in the case was handled by William Orrick, a judge appointed by the radically pro-abortion Barack Obama.
“Both Orrick and his wife are longtime donors to San Francisco’s Good Samaritan Family Resource Center (GSFRC), where Orrick was a board member and helped fund and open a Planned Parenthood clinic on its site. That clinic sold fetal tissue to StemExpress, a for-profit wholesaler exposed by CMP’s videos and reporting,” The Federalist has reported.
Here are two of the videos released by CMP:
See a CMP video about Planned Parenthood skirting federal law:
