Planned Parenthood Trial: Journalist Slammed with 2.2 Million Judgement

by: Celia Farber
2019-11-17
Source: UncoverDC
09/19/2023

By Celia Farber

A San Francisco federal jury rendered a verdict on Nov 15 that body-slammed first amendment rights and the anti-abortion movement; a movement which dared to bare its darkest trade secrets. The verdict met mixed reactions: The jury ruled that undercover journalists David Daleiden, Sandra Merritt, and colleagues must pay various damages to Planned Parenthood totaling $2.2 million, for undercover recordings that exposed potentially illegal practices of fetus organ harvesting and selling to biotech companies. The jury found, in accordance with the judge’s instructions, that the group had trespassed on private property, and had committed fraud. A statement from David Daleiden of The Center For Medical Progress read:

“Justice was not done today in San Francisco. While top Planned Parenthood witnesses spent six weeks testifying under oath that the undercover videos are true and planned parenthood sold fetal organs on a quid pro quo basis, a biased judge with close Planned Parenthood ties spent six weeks influencing the jury with pre-determined rulings and suppressing the video evidence, all in order to rubber-stamp Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit attack on the first amendment. This is a dangerous precedent for citizen journalism and First Amendment civil rights across the country, sending a message that speaking the truth and facts to criticize the powerful is no longer protected by our institutions.”

Planned Parenthood was awarded close to $470,000 in security upgrade damages, along with $870,000 in punitive damages against CMP. The final amount, tripled under RICO provisions, comes to nearly $2.3 million.

This despite the fact that the illicit recordings proved beyond a shadow of a doubt many shocking practices at Planned Parenthood clinics, including the “flipping” of fetuses in the womb to breech position, a practice that allows the abortionist to deliver intact, and increase the value of the body parts on the organ market. None of this, naturally, was disclosed to the women having the abortions.

“We’re thrilled with today’s verdict,” Planned Parenthood tweeted, ”which found the so-called “center For Medical Progress’,” David Daleiden, and others who created a false smear campaign against Planned Parenthood broke multiple state & federal laws.”

But voices in the opposition movement pointed out that there have been previous cases where abortion foes exposed horrors of the industry, were sued, lost, and later won on appeal. “The worse a judgement is in the trial courts, the better prospects you have on appeal,” said Peter Breen, Vice President and Senior Counsel of the Thomas More Society, which has supported CMP in this long battle.

Tom Brejcha, President, Founder and Chief Counsel of Thomas More Society, said that the judge, who has a history of supporting Planned Parenthood, “…literally put an instruction in that said the first amendment doesn’t apply, which was an utter falsehood. So we’re looking forward to bringing that and a lot of other issues on to appeal.”

Father Frank Pavone, pro-life advocate and talk host, tweeted that the verdict was a “Pyrrhic victory,” “…because now we have more solid evidence of that the #abortion industry does than we had before, because we have sworn testimony and much documentation. Let’s expose it!”

Had Planned Parenthood not sued Daleiden and colleagues, they would also not have created a bedrock of damning evidence one can assume will lead to countless new lawsuits against the abortion giant in the years ahead. No doubt, the critical wedge has been driven; a wedge that has forever destabilized Big Abortion’s stranglehold on cultural acceptance and mass media darling-hood.

And for the record, I was wrong to assume, in a recent act of wishful thinking, this jury would possibly take the judge literally and award $1 for each act of trespassing. It was impossible for me to imagine 12 people listening to 6 weeks of even a heavily censored presentation of this horror story and not rule in favor of the defendants.

This was a shocking verdict. It reflects the abyss that divides the nation, and how disparate our moral codes, assumptions, and standards are. Who knew people were this offended by trespassing? Especially when the trespassing made possible the revelation of something so abhorrent as was revealed here.

Celia Farber is half Swedish, raised there, so knows “socialism” from the inside. She has focused her writings on freedom and tyranny, with an early focus on pharmaceutical industry and media abuses on human liberties.She has been under ferocious attack for her writings on HIV/AIDS, as a psychological operation and rooted in fake science. She is a contributor to UncoverDc.com and The Epoch Times, and has in the past written for Harper’s, Esquire, Rolling Stone and more. Having been gravely injured in legacy media, she never wants to go back. She is the recipient of the Semmelweis International Society Clean Hands Award For Investigative Journalism and was under such attack for her work she had to at one point seek protection from the FBI and NYPD. She is the author of: “Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS,” and the editor of The Truth Barrier, an investigative, and literary website. She co-hosts “The Whistleblower Newsroom” with Kristina Borjesson on PRN, Fridays at 10am.