pro-life activist david daleiden protesting against planned parenthood.

Anti-abortion activists connected to Planned Parenthood video charged in California

March 29, 2017
1 min read

Two anti-abortion activists were charged for filming Planned Parenthood workers without consent, while posing as representatives of a fake company seeking to buy fetal tissue.

David Daleiden, 28, and Sandra Merritt, 63, received 15 felony charges on Tuesday, for filming healthcare workers in California and Texas from October 2013 to July 2015, said California State Attorney General Xavier Becerra reading a statement. “The right to privacy is a cornerstone of California’s Constitution, and a right that is foundational in a free democratic society,” said Attorney General Becerra. “We will not tolerate the criminal recording of confidential conversations.”

“The conversations that we secretly recorded were in open areas and in public areas where people could overhear,” said Daleiden, arguing that the conversations were not confidential, in a telephone call to Reuters.

David Daleiden (right) leaves a courtroom after a hearing in Houston, March 28, 2017. (Pat Sullivan/AP)

A controversial edited video of the conversations had originally been released in 2015 by Center for Medical Progress, the California non-profit run by Daleiden. The videos purported to show Planned Parenthood workers discussing the sale of aborted fetal tissue. For profit sale of fetal tissue is illegal in the United States. Subsequent investigations by Congress, and various state and local authorities failed to find any evidence of the same.

The videos, which were attacked as being deceptively edited, were cited by Republican candidates in the 2016 election, particularly Carly Fiorina. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal had ordered the state’s health department to investigate “this alleged evil and illegal activity,” and Jeb Bush, in a tweet, called the video “a shocking and horrific reminder that we must do so much more to foster a culture of life in America.”

In January 2016, a grand jury in Harris County, Texas, cleared the local Planned Parenthood of wrongdoing. Instead, the activists were indicted for using fake driver’s licenses to identify themselves, a separate case that was later dropped.

California is one of 12 “All-Party Consent” States. This means that in order to record a conversation in California, it is required that everyone in a conversation needs to consent for it to be recorded, unless there is an expectation that the conversation could be overheard. Texas only requires the consent of one member of a conversation to record.

Planned Parenthood took to twitter to celebrate the decision.

Full video:

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