PLANNED PARENTHOOD
EXPOSED
Terrisa Bukovinac, Founder and Executive Director of Pro-Life San Francisco In 2015 The Center for Medical Progress (CMP), led by David Daleiden, released explosive undercover videos featuring top Planned Parenthood (PP) executives candidly discussing the procurement and sale of fetal tissue. Since then, these videos have sparked a massive PP counter campaign, multiple lawsuits against Daleiden and his associate Sandra Merritt, the demise of a major procurement corporation and a full-scale investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) into Planned Parenthood’s baby body parts business.
Organs for Sale
On July 15th, 2015, CMP released its first video featuring Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s (PPFA) Senior Medical Director, Dr. Deborah Nucatola. Nucatola discussed various ways to alter late-term abortion procedures in order to obtain more valuable tissue for sale (a federal crime). People from across the political spectrum were horrified and shocked by the callous way Nucatola spoke about the demand for fetal livers, lungs and hearts, all while enjoying a salad and red wine.
The Counter Narrative
Prior to the release, Daleiden spent two years working undercover posing as Robert Sarkis, an employee of Biomax—a tissue procurement company. This alias allowed Daleiden to go deep within the abortion industry to collect data including the video featuring Dr. Nucatola. CMP released a dozen additional videos depicting similar conversations with other top-level PP medical staff looking to contribute to the fiscal growth of their clinics. PP needed a counter narrative, and needed to act fast. It promptly poured an alleged $8 million into a PR campaign that gave rise to the hashtag #StandWithPP as well as talking points like “deceptively edited” and “anti-choice extremists” which dominated every major media outlet.
PP and its supporters continue to deny wrongdoing and insist the incriminating evidence in the CMP videos were debunked because they were “deceptively edited.” PP hired Fusion GPS, an elite Washington, D.C. opposition research firm, to review the videos. Their analysis, however, “did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation.” Fusion also found “no evidence that CMP inserted dialogue not spoken by PP staff.” Another analysis funded by Alliance Defending Freedom was conducted by the third-party forensics company Coalfire which concluded the videos were “authentic” and “were not manipulated.”1
A “Just” Justice
Soon after the initial release, PP, Stem Express (a tissue procurement company) and the National Abortion Federation filed a series of lawsuits against the CMP team. Although Stem Express eventually dropped its lawsuit and walked away empty-handed, PPFA and the NAF were able to secure a preliminary injunction which prevented CMP from releasing the hours of additional footage to the public or to law enforcement. The presiding judge in this case, Judge William Orrick III, has an ongoing relationship with PP Northern California, one of the plaintiffs suing Daleiden.2 According to CMP, there are at least a dozen additional videos yet to be released. On December 13, 2017 attorneys representing CMP filed a writ of mandamus at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in hopes of removing Orrick and replacing him with an unbiased judge. It’s unclear why San Francisco’s courts have not already removed Orrick from the case.
To the Courts
In December 2017 the DOJ announced its investigation into PP’s role in the sale and trafficking of human fetal organs.3 Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas reached a plea deal with DV Biologics LLC and sister company DaVinci Biosciences LLC—a biotech procurement company that worked directly with PP— in which the company will pay $7.8 million in damages,4 admit guilt in trafficking fetal tissue and
People from across the political spectrum were horrified and shocked by the callous way Nucatola spoke about the demand for fetal livers, lungs and hearts, all while enjoying a salad and red wine. 8 The Truth About Planned Parenthood
