After the lawsuit was filed, Daleiden told The Associated Press that he looked forward to confronting Planned Parenthood in court.
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A Houston grand jury Monday indicted David Daleiden, CMP’s founder, on a felony charge of tampering with a governmental record and a misdemeanor count related to purchasing human organs. Under Texas law, the felony charge carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
Two anti-abortion activists indicted in connection with an undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood will be represented by Harris County’s former GOP leader and a prominent criminal defense attorney. But there’s a select committee created to investigate the use of fetal tissue and how it’s provided to researchers. Daleiden’s California license claimed his name was Robert David Sarkis.
Texas Right to Life denounced the grand jury proceedings as a politically motivated “kangaroo court” and expressed solidarity with Daleiden and his colleagues.
At first the plan seemed to be working. He’s the head of the Center for Medical Progress, which is a company he basically set up to put out these undercover videos.
“Planned Parenthood still can not deny the admissions from their leadership about fetal organ sales captured on video for all the world to see”, notes the Houston Chronicle. They were brought by a Republican district attorney appointed by a Republican lieutenant governor to unearth criminal dirt on Planned Parenthood.
“It would be quite unusual for the grand jury to change direction without the cooperation and approval of the prosecutor”, Sklansky said.
The pro-life group said that grand jury failed to return a “true bill” that would have led to Karpen’s prosecution.
So a national firestorm should fizzle in Harris County, but the real scandal is how doctored videos were used to motivate demagogues to defund the healthcare provider for 2.8 million American women, many of them on Medicaid.
Grand juries meet behind closed doors to consider evidence about whether someone should be charged with a crime. “I respect their decision on this hard case”, the Chronicle reported.
Planned Parenthood officials and the organization’s defenders say the videos have prompted a dramatic rise in violence against abortion clinics, including a November 27 shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs that left three dead. Schaffer said the activist emailed Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast in June, offering to pay $1,600 for each fetal specimen. On Monday, Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson announced the indictments as a result of a criminal investigation into allegations that Planned Parenthood was illegally selling fetal tissue.
According to Planned Parenthood, officials in eleven states have cleared the group of wrongdoing. And Daleiden was schooled in the science and terminology of fetal tissue research.
Daleiden, who describes himself as a “citizen journalist”, engaged in anti-abortion activism while attending Davis High School, working with like-minded college students and older activists.
CBS News’ Jan Crawford reports that Dalieden said their undercover techniques were the same as other investigative journalists – a point underscored by Constitutional scholars like Cornell University’s Michael Dorf. “We did not break any laws”, she said.
Daleiden did not return a call for comment. All cleared the health provider of wrongdoing.
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She said, “In the public eye, this case will continue to remain an issue, not because of these particular odd charges, but because the underlying issue is abortion rights”. “Their crusade to punish Planned Parenthood for no good reason will impact thousands of Ohioans who go to city and county health departments for HIV tests, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and medical care to have a healthy pregnancy”.
