-
November 4, 2019
Nicholas Wolfram Smith
Testimony in a civil damages case brought by Planned Parenthood Federation of America against a pro-life group that conducted an undercover investigation of possible illegal trafficking in fetal tissue continued in its fifth week before a U.S. District Court jury in San Francisco.
Planned Parenthood, along with some affiliates, sued Center for Medical Progress, David Daleiden and other defendants, accusing them of fraud, breach of contract, unlawful recording of conversations, civil conspiracy and racketeering. The organization, the nation’s largest abortion provider, is seeking damages in connection with upgrading security after the investigation. The defendants have denied the claims.
In his preliminary instructions to the jury of three women and nine men, U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick said “the claims and defenses in the case concern the strategies chosen and employed by the defendants.” He emphasized that the case is not about “whether plaintiffs profited from the sale of fetal tissue or otherwise violated the law in securing tissue for those programs. It is not about whether any plaintiff actually engaged in illegal conduct. Those issues are a matter of dispute between the parties in the world outside this courtroom.”
In her opening statement, plaintiff’s attorney Rhonda Trotter told the jury that the case is about the defendants’ plan “to use any means, including illegal means, to try to destroy Planned Parenthood.” She said Daleiden’s goals were to defund Planned Parenthood and “ignite public outrage” against it.
The vehicle for that plan was a series of secretly recorded videos released in 2015 on YouTube that raised concerns about whether abortion clinics may be profiting from the sale of fetal tissue and organs.
To make those videos, Trotter said, Daleiden created false licenses and names and registered a business in order to access abortion industry conferences and tape people without their knowledge. The videos made Planned Parenthood incur costs to upgrade security and provide employee protection, she said.
Defense attorney Charles LiMandri, representing Daleiden, Center for Medical Progress and two other defendants, told the jury that Daleiden undertook as a “civic duty” an investigative project “to stop the unlawful practices in organizations profiting from the sale of fetal tissue.”
Daleiden, he said, investigated three forms of criminal activity he suspected were facilitated by Planned Parenthood: selling fetal tissue and organs for a profit, altering abortion procedures to gain more marketable tissue, and whether “fetuses were actually born alive, after which time their tissue and organs were harvested.”
Daleiden, who created and led the investigation, took the stand Oct. 21 as a witness for the plaintiffs. He testified for four days about his actions and reasons for pursuing a project that created nearly 500 hours of video.
Under questioning, Daleiden testified that he had filled out legal documents with fake names that were being used in the investigation, registered and accessed abortion conferences under those names and signed confidentiality agreements at those conferences.
He stressed, though, that he saw himself as a citizen journalist and tried to make sure he followed relevant laws and agreements. The pseudonyms, identification cards and tissue procurement company he formed, BioMax, were created to support an undercover investigation.
“I did this project because I wanted to document and expose the plaintiffs’ in this case participation in the harvesting and sale of aborted fetal organs and tissues for profit, against the law,” he said.
Based on his investigation, he said, “there is no ethical or legal way to provide the body parts of aborted children for experimentation.”
Outside the courtroom, the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, representing Daleiden, has called the suit “the pro-life trial of this generation” and a “David vs. Goliath” case.
Daleiden lawyer and Freedom of Conscience chief counsel Charles LiMandri said in a May 30 website post that “the law and the facts plainly show that Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit is a vindictive crusade to destroy a pro-life hero.”
Defense attorney Harmeet Dhillon expressed a similar sentiment in her opening argument, telling the jury that the case illustrates “what happens when a powerful, large corporation gets a little negative publicity that it doesn’t like and responds by hitting back at a small start-up company and a handful of individuals.”
Planned Parenthood had not responded to a request for comment by press time for this article and has not commented publicly on the trial. A summary on its website posted soon after the investigation said Planned Parenthood “has been the subject of a widely discredited video smear campaign.”
The trial is scheduled to conclude Nov. 8, although an additional week of court time has been allotted if needed.