Taking a Stand for Life

When the law is on your side, argue the law. When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When neither the facts nor the law are on your side, make an ad hominem attack.
—Old Adage—

David Daleiden is the founder of the Center for Medical Progress [CMP], a 501(c)3 non-profit organization located in Irvine, California. According to the organization’s website,

The Center for Medical Progress is a group of citizen journalists dedicated to monitoring and reporting on medical ethics and advances. We are concerned about contemporary bioethical issues that impact human dignity, and we oppose any interventions, procedures, and experiments that exploit the unequal legal status of any class of human beings. We envision a world in which medical practice and biotechnology ally with and serve the goods of human nature and do not destroy, disfigure, or work against them.

Toward these ends, CMP conducted a sting operation in which it produced a series of undercover videos that exposed illegal activities conducted by Planned Parenthood. These activities included, but were not limited to, the sale of aborted babies’ bodies and body parts for profit. All the CMP videos are displayed and can be viewed on a web page provided by Alliance Defending Freedom. In this article, a summary of each video release is presented.

In the days, weeks, and months during which CMP released the videos, the mainstream media, for the most part, were either silent about the scandal, or they slanted their reporting in favor of Planned Parenthood. The following dates link to corresponding stories about lack of coverage or about biased reporting.

Despite the media’s silence, the recordings created a stir. One of the lines of defense used by Planned Parenthood [PP] was that the videos had been “deceptively edited” so as to present PP in a negative light. This was and is an empty accusation, one that prompted Media Research Center President Brent Bozell to criticize the selective editing in which network news organizations engage regularly. As CMP spokesman David Daleiden stated, “The fact is, CMP is exponentially more transparent than CNN or any mainstream network about our production decisions….”

A grand jury in Harris County, Texas, was convened to review the evidence raised by one of the CMP videos against a Houston Planned Parenthood clinic, but in the end the grand jury chose to indict CMP spokesman Daleiden. News of the indictments against Daleiden and another member of the CMP team came on January 25, 2016. Writing for lifenews.com, Steven Ertelt explains,

The video of the Houston Planned Parenthood makes it appear the Planned Parenthood abortion business may be selling the “fully intact” bodies of unborn babies purposefully born alive and left to die. The video shows the Director of Research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, Melissa Farrell, advertising the Texas Planned Parenthood branch’s track record of fetal tissue sales, including its ability to deliver fully intact aborted babies.

In the video, actors posing as representatives from a human biologics company meet with Farrell at the abortion-clinic headquarters of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast in Houston to discuss a potential partnership to harvest fetal organs.

But today [1/25/16], [the] Texas grand jury indicted David Daleiden and another pro-life activist behind the videos. Instead of prosecuting Planned Parenthood for selling aborted baby parts, Daleiden was indicted for buying them.

Daleiden also was charged, along with Sandra Merritt, with a felony—altering a government document to produce a counterfeit ID. If convicted, Daleiden could be sentenced to 20 years in prison. The grand jury offered no adverse consequences to Planned Parenthood.

Denying any wrongdoing, CMP responded, “The Center for Medical Progress uses the same undercover techniques that investigative journalists have used for decades in exercising our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and of the press, and follows all applicable laws. We respect the processes of the Harris County District Attorney, and note that buying fetal tissue requires a seller as well. Planned Parenthood still cannot deny the admissions from their leadership about fetal organ sales captured on video for all the world to see.”

Live Action’s Lila Rose, a former colleague of Daleiden’s, said the CMP founder is a victim. She further said,

David Daleiden and his team have done a tremendous public service by exposing the horrific crimes against humanity that Planned Parenthood hides behind closed doors. CMP’s investigation forced Planned Parenthood, a tax-funded billion dollar corporation, to admit it was harvesting and selling aborted baby parts.

Rose went on to point out that the office of Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson

was asked months ago about recusing itself from this case because one of its prosecutors serves as a board member of the Planned Parenthood affiliate involved in the case. It is unacceptable that the office did not recuse itself to eliminate any and all questions of potential bias. A special prosecutor should be appointed now to review this entire investigation.

Lila Rose is right; one might readily question Ms. Anderson’s perspective in this case. Is she truly unbiased, or does she have an agenda? At the very least, conflict of interest questions can and should be raised. There’s more. Ms. Anderson (pictured above) also is being criticized for failing “to prosecute an abortionist known as the Kermit Gosnell of Houston.” Gosnell was a Philadelphia abortion doctor who was convicted of grisly practices at his clinic, including murdering three infants who had been born alive.

This sad episode tells us a great deal about the abortion lobby. It will seek to hide the truth by ignoring it, and when that doesn’t work, it will accuse pro-lifers everything in the book! Even so, the truth cannot cannot be ignored or denied forever. We must tell it and retell it. We no longer can sit comfortably on the sidelines saying nothing. If we fail to speak up, we become complicit in the ongoing practice of abortion.

Significantly, the indictments of Daleiden and Merritt came just three days after the 2016 March for Life in Washington, D.C. and the 43^rd anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. Despite the impending threat of horrific winter weather, the March for Life drew tens of thousands of mostly young people to the nation’s capital to take a stand for life. Their efforts, too, were largely ignored by the media.