Pro-Life Group Ordered to Pay Nearly $1 Million to Planned Parenthood
A federal jury in San Francisco on Friday ruled that the pro-life group Center for Medical Progress (CMP), led by David Daleiden, must pay Planned Parenthood $870,000 in punitive damages. According to the jury, CMP “caused substantial harm to Planned Parenthood by infiltrating abortion industry conferences to secretly tape abortion doctors and staff,” Courthouse News reported.
Between 2013 and 2015, Daleiden and his co-defendant, Sandra Merritt, attended abortion industry conferences posing as human tissue procurers. During those conferences, Daleiden and Merritt secretly recorded conversations as part of an investigation into the abortion giant.
According to Daleiden’s attorneys, CMP was investigating “violent felonies.” Daleiden and Merritt believed babies were being born alive at Planned Parenthood clinics and that the organization was illegally selling fetal tissue for medical research.
In court, Planned Parenthood argued the videos were selectively edited to make it look as though employees were talking about making money off fetal tissue donations. Planned Parenthood currently operates fetal tissue programs at six clinics in California and Washington.
“David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress intentionally waged a multi-year illegal effort to manufacture a malicious campaign against Planned Parenthood,” Alexis McGill Johnson, the acting president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, told TheHill. “The jury recognized today that those behind the campaign broke the law in order to advance their goals of banning safe, legal abortion in this country, and to prevent Planned Parenthood from serving the patients who depend on us.” (Read more from “Pro-Life Group Ordered to Pay Nearly $1 Million to Planned Parenthood” HERE)
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