“It is outrageous that he has to appear here when it is Planned Parenthood that should be on trial”, Jared Woodfill, another of Daleiden’s lawyers and the former chairman of the Harris County Republican Party, told reporters. Merritt was also offered probation in a settlement, but her attorneys have not indicated whether she’ll take the offer.
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“The only thing we’re going to accept right now is an apology”, he said.
Sandra Merritt, one of the two anti-abortion activists indicted last month, leaves the courtroom after turning herself in to authorities and bonding out Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016, in Houston. Their latest study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that Texas Medicaid claims for IUDs (or so-called long-acting reversible contraception) dropped by 35 percent in the years after Texas booted Planned Parenthood from the Women’s Health Program and axed family planning funding. The felony charge was in reference to the use of a fake ID.
“They’re doing is under the guise of protecting women’s health, but we know what the truth is”, said Eskamani, “And the reality is that abortion is an incredibly safe medical procedure”. “This is about a mission”.
There’s also the question of public funding for Planned Parenthood. “Governor Abbott and Attorney General [Ken] Paxton need to send a strong message that Houston’s children are not for sale, and they must immediately appoint a special prosecutor to hold Planned Parenthood accountable to the law”.
Addressing this, Daleiden says: “Now obviously, we don’t want to end up paying for material that we can’t use”, and suggests that there be a line item fee of “something else that represents the specimens”.
“I think it’s the appropriate checks and balances that has to go on within the three branches of government”, said Rep. Matt Hudson, R-Naples, the House’s health care budget chairman.
Planned Parenthood spokesman Eric Ferrero said Thursday that “the wheels of justice have only begun to roll”, and that the group doesn’t “expect this to be the last time these extremists are booked and fingerprinted”.
“If you were serious about reducing the rates of abortions in the state, you would work with organizations like Planned Parenthood to focus on prevention and access to contraception and sexual health education”, said Eskamani, director of public policy of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida.
Both are charged with tampering with a governmental record, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Daleiden also allegedly e-mailed clinic officials an offer to pay hundreds of dollars for specific organs from aborted fetuses, a misdemeanor that could land him an extra year in jail.
The second count against Daleiden says he “unlawfully, intentionally and knowingly” offered to buy fetal tissue “for valuable consideration” – the same offense he was trying to catch Planned Parenthood staff committing by making undercover recordings at the Houston clinic. Undercover investigators for CMP David Daleiden and Sandra Merrit were indicted by a Harris County, Texas grand jury after being indicted for the purchase of fetal organs.
Daleiden spent 30 months posing as a representative from a tissue procurement company, lunching with top Planned Parenthood executives and gaining access to private areas of clinics.
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Only 1 percent of Planned Parenthood’s almost 700 heath-care facilities nationwide facilitate fetal tissue donation, the organization’s president Cecile Richards said in an October 2015 letter to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
