'The Fight Is On': Planned Parenthood Goes 'Back on Defense,' Waving White Flag in Legal Funding Fight
Planned Parenthood went on the defensive after a 2015 undercover investigation conducted by pro-life journalist David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress exposed the abortion vendor’s illegal fetal tissue trafficking trade.
On hidden camera, multiple high-ranking Planned Parenthood officials were caught callously negotiating the sale of aborted baby body parts and admitting to dangerously altering abortion procedures to procure and sell more “intact” fetuses.
The abortion vendor retaliated by publicly dismissing the videos as a “fake smear campaign” and filing multiple lawsuits against the pro-life journalist and CMP, claiming it was the victim of “false and malicious accusations.”
But Planned Parenthood’s obfuscations are wearing thin, and its recent actions in Texas are a clear reflection of that.
On Wednesday, Daleiden tweeted that Planned Parenthood of Gulf Coast had “DISMISSED” a federal lawsuit centered around its “disqualification” from Texas Medicaid funding.
After failed attempts were made to defund the entity over CMP’s videos in 2016, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later ruled in January 2019 that Texas could strip Planned Parenthood of taxpayer subsidies. The corporation eventually responded to this series of legal proceedings by suing the state in February.
Now it seems Planned Parenthood has abandoned its efforts to regain Texas Medicaid funding, and CMP’s investigation appears to have played a significant part in this development.
“Planned Parenthood SURRENDERED today because their sale of baby body parts is indefensible,” Daleiden wrote.
BREAKING—VICTORY: This morning, @PPGulfCoast DISMISSED their federal lawsuit against their disqualification from Texas Medicaid due to their wrongdoing found on my undercover videos.
Planned Parenthood SURRENDERED today because their sale of baby body parts is indefensible.
⚖️
— David Daleiden (@daviddaleiden) May 14, 2021
The Thomas More Society, a nonprofit law firm representing the pro-life journalist, spoke with The Western Journal about what this means for Daleiden’s ongoing court battles with the abortion vendor.
According to TMS vice president and senior counsel Peter Breen, Planned Parenthood’s surrender was a “long time coming.”
“This is a major step in reversing an injustice that has been done to David Daleiden and to his investigators,” Breen told The Western Journal.
“And today’s act, Planned Parenthood dropping their lawsuit, is a concession that the videos showed them doing wrong.”
This is not the first time that the abortion vendor was forced to admit to the validity of Daleiden’s undercover investigation, however.
In 2019, Planned Parenthood testified under oath to illegally harvesting and selling fetal body parts during a civil trial against the pro-life journalist. Yet, despite the admission of guilt, Judge William Orrick III awarded the organization $16 million.
In a separate, ongoing trial, the pro-life journalist and his CMP colleague Sandra Merritt also face a series of felony charges in the San Francisco Superior Court for their undercover reporting.
While Breen expects the criminal case to go to trial at the end of the year, he also believes Planned Parenthood surrendering its Texas lawsuit will benefit Daleiden legally.
“Every time a positive action is taken in the legal fights in other jurisdictions, that helps us in California,” the attorney said.
“Because early on, the only narrative inside the legal community were the rulings, the very negative rulings of the courts in California.”
“And now, when you see the courts in other parts of the country looking at this controversy and ruling in the opposite direction, it forces judges and lawyers who are looking at this issue to take a step back and really dig deeper,” he added.
While Planned Parenthood “struck back hard” against Daleiden, making several gains on the offensive front, Breen said that the corporation is now “back on defense.”
“Which is a place where you really want them, which is where they should have been the whole time,” the attorney said.
Pointing to the cultural impact of CMP’s work, Breen noted that, even though the videos were released in 2015, their relevance has not faded. While the issue “ebbs and flows,” what was revealed in that footage is “still very much high on people’s minds.”
“And the controversy over these videos, the fact that we are still fighting — I mean we could have been the equivalent of dead and buried in the legal side,” he said.
“But now we are fighting, fighting harder than ever. And there’s numerous fronts to the legal fights, you know.”
“We’ve got six different lawsuits pending right now — criminal courts, state criminal courts, civil courts all over the place,” the attorney added.
“The fight is on.”
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