Long-running US legal case over ‘cash for baby parts’ exposé is at an end

Legal action against two investigative journalists who exposed Planned Parenthood’s apparent trafficking of body parts from aborted babies has ended.

After a near decade-long legal battle, David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt announced a plea deal with the California Attorney General’s office that includes no jail time and no fines.

In 2015, Daleiden and Merritt – working for pro-life group the Centre for Medical Progress (CMP) – released undercover videos including one which showed senior members of Planned Parenthood ‘haggling’ over the price of body parts from aborted babies.

Discrimination

In 2017, the San Francisco Superior Court dropped 14 separate criminal charges against David Daleiden, Sandra Merritt and CMP, describing them as “legally insufficient”.

CMP founder Daleiden said afterwards: “This is a politically motivated prosecution.”

“And this is discriminatory against pro-life Americans and a rally against Californians who happen to have a different point of view”, he added.

Another set of charges brought against the CMP were dropped in 2016.

‘Horrors’

Pro-life campaigner Daleiden described the new agreement as “a huge victory for my investigative reporting and for the public’s right to know the truth about Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby body parts”.

Liberty Counsel, which supported Merritt throughout the ordeal, applauded her “for revealing these horrors and then enduring this selective and vindictive prosecution as a result”.

Welcoming the end of the case, CMP said the “undercover reporting at issue in the case led to a $7.8 million settlement in which two companies admitted illegally selling aborted fetuses from Planned Parenthood in southern California”.

According to Liberty Counsel, the agreement involves Merritt pleading ‘No Contest’ to “one felony charge, which, after a one-year probationary period will be reduced to a misdemeanor at sentencing, and then expunged from her record entirely”.

Abortion giant

Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortions in the United States. According to its most recent annual report, ‘Above and Beyond’, the group and its affiliates performed 392,715 abortions in 2022-23.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute observed that this is a record number of abortions for the organisation and marks a 20 per cent rise in deaths over ten years.

Human Coalition President Jeff Bradford said: “The sick irony is that they are going ‘above and beyond’ not to care for women but to expand abortion.”