You all know how David Daleiden, Sandra Merritt, and others associated with the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) changed the debate over abortion back in 2015. The pro-aborts are still working to punish these brave pro-lifers — whom we are making our final move to defend.
CMP published numerous undercover videos that showed Planned Parenthood officers making deals to sell “fetal tissue” — the remains of murdered babies — for “valuable consideration.” This was a direct violation of federal law.
Initially, the pro-abortion mainstream media were taken off guard. They actually reported on the story, and the disgust that ordinary people would normally feel at such news was allowed to find its expression.
Make no mistake. CMP’s ground-breaking investigative journalism didn’t just allege anything. It proved that Planned Parenthood was breaking the law. It also revealed the unmentionable seamy realities of the abortion industry. Abortionists spoke of wrenching limbs from their sockets by main force, of altering procedures to secure undamaged organs and even whole fetal heads.
Then the cover-up commenced. The line that was handed out for endless repetition was that the videos had been “edited.” Well, of course they’d been edited. The videos reporting that they had been edited had been edited, too. But CMP’s videos hadn’t been edited in a deceptive way. They revealed the truth about Planned Parenthood.
After the cover-up, the campaign for revenge picked up steam. Criminal charges, endless lawsuits — not against the wrongdoers, but against those who exposed the wrongdoing.
We at the Life Legal Defense Foundation helped fend off many of these attacks. But Planned Parenthood’s own lawsuit finally made it to court in San Francisco, under a biased judge and before a pro-abortion jury. Planned Parenthood won over $2 million in damages and $14 million in attorney fees — an outrageous outcome later upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Now we at Life Legal are in the midst of petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider this case and eventually to overturn the unjust judgment.
We filed our petition back in May. Planned Parenthood filed an opposition, and we have just filed a reply brief to correct the errors of Planned Parenthood’s legal ways.
Our top-notch attorneys — Katie Short, Corrine Konczal, and Mike Millen — use superlative legal knowledge and logic to show that there was no basis for Planned Parenthood’s claim of damages: that the organization suffered no injury to its business or property, that it cited only irrelevant case law, and that the judgment it won was unprecedented.
The Court is expected to respond when it comes back into session in the first week in October.
If the petition is granted, and if the law is followed, the Supreme Court will overturn the judgment.
But that’s often a big if.
Please pray that the Court will do the right thing — and please consider helping us with our work on behalf of the heroes of CMP and others like them.