Judge Censors Damning Undercover Look at the Abortion Industry - But Lawyer Says People 'Deserve' to See
A recent ruling from a United States district court judge has blocked the release of additional undercover videos recorded by pro-life journalist David Daleiden from the public eye.
In 2015, Daleiden and his team at the Center for Medical Progress released footage of high-ranking Planned Parenthood officials negotiating the sale of aborted body parts at National Abortion Federation conferences and trade shows.
The guerilla journalist’s team described NAF as a “criminal organization that has spent years conspiring with Planned Parenthood on how to violate federal laws on partial-birth abortion and fetal tissue sales.”
But now, it appears audiences will be prevented from viewing the “hundreds of hours of footage” exposing the abortion industry’s illegal trafficking scheme.
Judge Blocks Pro-Life Activist David Daleiden from Releasing Undercover Videos of Abortion Conference – https://t.co/tREmlAqmQU pic.twitter.com/hHQAJTdNpa
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According to court documents filed on April 7, Judge William H. Orrick III awarded a permanent injunction to NAF, ordering that the undercover videos recorded by Daleiden are to remain sealed.
NAF had previously been granted a temporary injunction on Daleiden’s footage in 2015, but Orrick’s recent decision barred the release of additional footage indefinitely.
The Thomas More Society, a nonprofit law firm representing Daleiden, shared on its website plans to appeal Orrick’s latest decision — which the firm claims “strikes at the heart of the First Amendment.”
“If these videos involved any issue other than abortion, you would have seen them by now,” TMS vice president and senior counsel Peter Breen told The Western Journal.
“And really, the abortion industry has been successful in eroding the First Amendment rights of undercover journalists and the American people for years, and we, the people, have to push back hard on that.”
This is not the first time that Orrick has ruled against Daleiden and the organization he founded. Even though Planned Parenthood admitted under oath to the accuracy of CMP’s videos, Orrick sided with the abortion vendor in 2019, when he levied a $16 million judgment against Daleiden.
According to Breen, the First Amendment concerns questions posed by the case that could impact more than just the pro-life community.
Indeed, animal rights organizations reflected these same concerns in a friend-of-the-court submission filed last month. Activist groups ranging from Animal Outlook to PETA argued that lower court decisions against CMP could set a standard where investigative subjects can sue undercover journalists.
The First Amendment’s free speech protections, the attorney went on to say, are not limited to the “person speaking.” The amendment is also intended to protect the right of the people to receive information from the speaker.
If NAF did not want its trade show recorded, Breen said they should have taken steps to “secure it.”
Considering that NAF failed to screen Daleiden and his fake fetal procurement company properly — even going so far as to invite the pro-life journalist to several conferences — Breen questioned how the videos could be “permanently concealed consistent with the First Amendment.”
The injunction prevented him from disclosing the videos’ full content, but Breen did say they contain material that would leave many people “shocked” if they saw them.
“And certainly, there’s a lot of material in there that the people of this country deserve to see,” the attorney said.
“Not just on the issue of fetal tissue trafficking, but on other abortion-related issues and issues about how — video that will — that would impact the way we govern ourselves, the way we decide to regulate abortion and the harvesting of the body parts of aborted children.”
Still, Orrick claimed in his recent ruling that he had reviewed the videos and determined they “disclosed no criminal activity.” But the judicial decision disregards an expert report from abortionist Forrest Smith, one of the country’s longest practicing abortion providers.
Contrary to Orrick’s findings, the abortionist wrote that the footage shows Planned Parenthood staff members violating the “medical standard of care.” But Orrick chose to ignore Smith’s expertise and rely on his personal assessment of the videos instead.
“And so when you have a federal judge sitting by himself and opposing medical experts, prosecutors, other legal experts — that puts that federal judge in the position of a censor over information that the American people need to see,” Breen said.
“David Daleiden and his group are, you know, they’re not — he’s not rich people. They’re just regular folks who decided to take on a great mission, and they need the protection of the courts.”
The Thomas More Society plans to take Daleiden’s case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and even the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.
“And we’re fighting very hard, against both the state courts in California and the federal courts, to vindicate the work that David did so that — the people of the country who have seen David’s videos know that Planned Parenthood did some things that were heinously wrong.”
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