Pro-life journalist David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress filed a motion on Thursday to compel Planned Parenthood to produce evidence about its fetal tissue procurement operations. Daleiden also submitted evidence that Planned Parenthood and their business partners may have doctored records about their revenues from selling aborted fetal body parts and later lied to Congress about them. Planned Parenthood is currently suing Daleiden and CMP after they released undercover investigative footage showing that the abortion provider sells baby body parts.
As part of his defense, Daleiden is asking the Court to force Planned Parenthood and their suspect business partners to produce the key original records from their baby body parts harvesting programs. Planned Parenthood agreed to produce a portion of the requested documents, but many of those documents were already produced in response to various Congressional investigations. The abortion provider has largely balked at the requests, such as refusing to identify the officials responsible for complying with fetal tissue donation laws, claiming that they are too burdensome.
“Planned Parenthood’s entire enterprise is shrouded in deception and secrecy. But that comes as no surprise because profiting from selling baby body parts is not only illegal—it is evil.”
FCDF Statement
Daleiden is asking the court to force Planned Parenthood to produce the documents because they are critical to support his affirmative defenses, including that Planned Parenthood is guilty of “unclean hands.” Daleiden seeks documents related to the following:
- Planned Parenthood’s scheme to profit from the sale of fetal tissue;
- Planned Parenthood’s modifying abortion procedures to maximize its profit from selling fetal tissue;
- Planned Parenthood’s violations of the federal partial-birth abortion ban maximize its fetal tissue profiting;
- Planned Parenthood’s procurement of tissue from born-alive infants to sell; and
- Planned Parenthood’s procuring and selling fetal tissue without donor consent.
“The glaring discrepancies in Planned Parenthood’s alleged documentation of their baby body parts revenues call into question every statement Planned Parenthood has ever made in defense of their abortion harvesting programs. This would not be the first time Planned Parenthood has apparently doctored critical evidence about their own wrongdoing. Planned Parenthood has everything to lose if the full scope of their illicit trade in aborted baby body parts is revealed, and when the Congressional investigations made criminal referrals of Planned Parenthood and their business partners for selling baby parts, the House Select Panel had to refer Planned Parenthood partner StemExpress for evidence destruction. As the U.S. Department of Justice continues to follow up on the criminal referrals for Planned Parenthood and ABR, it is imperative for prosecutors to seize the original financial records from Planned Parenthood and their accomplices immediately, so these depraved enterprises cannot continue to cover up their criminal sale of baby body parts.”
David Daleiden
Daleiden is also seeking related evidence from Advanced Bioscience Resources and the Regents of the University of California.
