A California Superior Court ruling Thursday halted an effort by StemExpress, a company that works with Planned Parenthood in its business of salvaging and using body parts of unborn babies, from gaining access to undercover videos that may expose the misdeeds of industry insiders.
The videos by the Center for Medical Progress, which sent undercover investigators to Planned Parenthood offices, have exposed a callous disregard for the mothers and unborn children. Six have been released so far.
One Planned Parenthood executive, negotiating for more money for body parts, is on video saying she didn’t want to be “low-balled” on parts of babies and wanted to buy a Lamborghini.
A former StemExpress worker also revealed that often the mothers are not asked for permission, which legally is required, before the bodies of their unborn infants are scavenged.
StemExpress and the National Abortion Federation were concerned when the videos first appeared about their impact and went to court to stop their dissemination. Temporary injunctions were granted in both cases, but hearings are scheduled in which the injunctions could be lifted.
In the Stem Express case, the company also went to court to try to gain access to the videos ahead of time, through court-ordered discovery.
The Superior Court ruling, released Thursday by the Alliance Defending Freedom, rejected the request.
“Plaintiff does not persuade the court that the discovery it seeks is necessary to obtain the preliminary injunction. That is because it appears unlikely that the court is going to grant the preliminary injunction. The injunction plaintiff seeks would prevent defendants from disseminating the videotapes.
“First, this proposed injunction would constitute a prior restraint on the defendants’ rights under the First Amendment and the parallel protections under the California Constitution. … Therefore, it is unlikely that the preliminary injunction will ultimately be granted,” the court said.
Chuck LiMandri, president of the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, said people “who don’t have anything to hide don’t go to court to stop journalists from reporting the truth.”
“The court was right to deny StemExpress’ request to gain access to damaging material against them obtained through solid investigative journalism,” he said. “Americans have the right to know the truth about Planned Parenthood’s sale of baby body parts and the ‘fiscal rewards’ Stem Express says that it provides to abortion clinics.”
His reference to “fiscal rewards” cites a promise by StemExpress in a brochure advertising the benefits for Planned Parenthood abortion businesses to do business there.
Life Legal Defense Foundation Vice President of Legal Affairs Catherine Short said that as has been “more than apparent from the videos that have been released, StemExpress and Planned Parenthood have plenty to hide.”
“These videos not only expose the potential illegality of Planned Parenthood’s actions, they expose the grisly, inhuman nature of Planned Parenthood’s business,” she said.
WND reported legal analysts said even if the courts suppress the evidence, there still are ways for it to become public.
The Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal published a commentary on the issue by Hans von Spakovsky, an authority on a wide range of issues including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform, and Elizabeth Slattery, who writes about the rule of law, the role of courts, civil rights and equal protection. They both are with the foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
They write:
[An] action that one or both of these congressional committees [investigating Planned Parenthood] should consider taking is immediately to request or subpoena all of the remaining videos from CMP that have not yet been released.
The actions of StemExpress and NAF, who are allies of Planned Parenthood, reveal the tactics that these abortion providers and organ buyers intend to use to prevent or delay the release of these videos: seeking out sympathetic judges who will prevent the further release of videos that severely damage the image of the abortion industry and reveal in gory detail their inner workings.
No federal or state judge has the authority to prevent a congressional committee from holding a hearing at which witnesses – like representatives of CMP – testify about their experiences or where the committee presents evidence it has obtained such as the undercover videos, which could also be posted on the committee’s website.
Such action by Congress may be the only way to ensure that litigation tactics do not prevent the public from seeing the rest of the evidence of Planned Parenthood’s possible violations of federal law, and its hideous practices and procedures.
In the NAF case, the initial ruling came from Judge William Orrick. In the StemExpress case, Joanne B. O’Donnell presided.
In an interview with CNN, David Daleiden, president of CMP, explained why he thought StemExpress was so concerned about its statements becoming public.
He said StemExpress is trying to suppress “a specific video recording of a meeting with their top leadership where their leadership admitted they sometimes get fully intact fetuses shipped to their lab from the abortion clinics.”
“That,” he said, “could be prima facie evidence of born-alive infants. That’s why they’re trying to suppress that and they’re very scared of it.”
See the interview:
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The video sting has resulted in more than a dozen state investigations, multiple congressional investigations and many attempts to withdraw taxpayer funding. It has become so big that even the ardently pro-abortion President Obama is urging states to keep money flowing to the abortionists.
See all the videos: No. 6:
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No. 5:
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No. 4:
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No. 2:
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No. 1:
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An old story
WND also has reported that as horrific as the videos appear, they should surprise no one, since such practices have been documented for nearly two decades already.
A price list uncovered by a pro-life organization dated June 1998 shows that the price per specimen from a second trimester abortion is $90 fresh and $130 frozen.
Mark Crutcher, whose Life Dynamics organization was a ground-breaker in investigating the abortion behemoth that gets some $500 million annually from U.S. taxpayers, worked on that investigation.
His group reported back in February 2000 how the baby parts market works: “A baby parts ‘wholesaler’ enters into a financial agreement with an abortion clinic in which the wholesaler pays a monthly ‘site fee’ to the clinic. For this payment, the wholesaler is allowed to place a retrieval agent inside the clinic where he or she is given access to the corpses of children killed there and a workspace to harvest their parts.”
He continued: “The buyer – usually a researcher working for a medical school, pharmaceutical company, bio-tech company or government agency – supplies the wholesaler with a list of the baby parts wanted. … when such orders are received … they are faxed to the retrieval agent at the clinic who harvests the requested parts and ships them to the buyer.”
The documentation was provided at that time to Life Dynamics by a worker who left Comprehensive Health for Women, a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Overland Park, Kansas.
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Among the documents was a “Fee-for-Services” Schedule A, effective June 1998, which outlined a charge of $220 per specimen for first-trimester aspiration abortions and $260 if the baby parts were frozen.
Crutcher’s report, citing Planned Parenthood’s own paperwork, found that one agent sold during February 1996 alone 47 livers, 11 liver fragments, seven brains, 21 eyes, eight thymuses, 23 legs, 14 pancreases, 14 lungs, six arms and one kidney-adrenal gland.
He also sold three orders of blood from the unborn child. The retrieval agent “harvested all of the parts,” the report said, explaining that “in order for the blood of an aborted child to be sold, the dead baby had to be brought to him intact.”
The “specimens,” the report said, would have generated up to about $25,000 in revenue for one month from one retrieval agent at one Planned Parenthood business.
Crutcher reported that the tissue logs reveal that one baby is often chopped up and sold to many buyers.
For example, babies taken from donors 113968 and 114189 were both killed late in their second trimester and cut into nine pieces. By applying the price list, buyers would have been invoiced between $3,510 and $5,070 for these parts, he said.
