The undercover video work a few years ago by David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress launched a long list of fights.
Congress has asked investigators to review what laws abortion industry executives might have violated in their unborn-baby-body-parts-for-sale scheme.
Several companies have been fined – and closed down – for their involvement.
The public now is acutely aware of the profit motive in the abortion industry. One of those executives, after all, said on video she wanted more money for those body parts because, “I want a Lamborghini.”
Now yet another battle is being waged.
It’s that public employees at the University of Washington are trying to use the First Amendment to claim a right to keep their identities concealed as they use tax money for the acquisition of baby body parts for research.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently heard arguments on the fight, which the taxpayer-funded workers won at the district court level. It already has been returned once to the lower court because of its errors, and now is pending before the appeals body again.
The case is Jane Does 1-10, et al v. David Daleiden, in which he as an investigative journalist is seeking information about the public employees working in a research lab at the university and what they’ve done, and abortion facility personnel.
They all “want their involvement in research using aborted baby body parts to remain secret,” according to officials with the Thomas More Society, which is representing Daleiden in this case.
They “have gone to court to force heavy redactions to the public documents. However, that is contrary to the law, which says that those documents must be released because they detail their work procuring, processing, and transferring the organs and tissue of aborted babies in connection with the university’s large taxpayer-funded fetal tissue research program,” the organization explains.
“Washington State’s Public Records Act requires full disclosure, but a lower court ordered the redactions, holding that the First Amendment required them. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed that decision, unanimously holding that the district court had not provided the facts and law sufficient to make a ‘clear showing’ that the U.S. Constitution requires the heavy censoring of these public records. The case returned to the district court and is now, again, before the federal appeals court,” the group explained.
A ruling on the concealment demand is expected shortly, but the legal team said Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown called it a “very interesting case.”
“She, along with Senior Circuit Court Judge A. Wallace Tashima and Circuit Judge Jacqueline H. Nguyen, heard Thomas More Society Special Counsel Peter Breen argue that, ‘This case has nothing to do with academic freedom or expression – the requested injunction in no way touches research.'”
Daleiden is best known for his undercover video exposé of Planned Parenthood’s alleged involvement in aborted baby body parts trafficking.
Breen emphasized the significance of the case’s connection to research on fetal tissue obtained via abortion.
“The fight over abortion has been going on for 50 years. The university employees claim that their First Amendment rights are being ‘chilled.’ Several of the Does have spoken publicly about their views on abortion. How can you say that you are being ‘chilled’ if you’ve put yourself out there in national media on the abortion issue?” Breen challenged.
He said facilitating fetal tissue donations is not an expressive activity, and is not protected by the First Amendment.
“Of particular concern in this case,” the legal team said, “is the fact that the workers seeking to hide their identities are in taxpayer-funded jobs.”
“First Amendment privacy has never been used to cloak government workers on government time. Controversy is reason for sunlight, not for cloaking government activity,” Breen said.
It’s just one of the court cases that have followed Daleiden’s work to expose the profit component of the U.S. abortion industry.
More than a dozen of the CMP videos were released. Here are two:
