In another blow to the Center for Medical Progress this week, a U.S. appeals court let stand a gag order that blocks the group from releasing more undercover videos.
The Center for Medical Progress called the decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday an “attack on the First Amendment,” and vowed to continue fighting the gag order.
The order involves undercover footage filmed at National Abortion Federation meetings. The pro-abortion group asked a court to block the Center for Medical Progress from releasing the footage, arguing that the undercover investigators violated a signed pledge to not distribute information from the NAF meetings without its consent, according to Politico.
On Wednesday, the 9th Circuit panel let stand an earlier decision by a federal judge to prohibit the release of the videos. The 9th Circuit panel argued that the videos “contain no evidence of criminal activity” and “the preliminary injunction carefully balances the interests of NAF and law enforcement.”
One of the three judges on the panel dissented. Judge Consuelo Callahan said law enforcement and state prosecutors should not be blocked from receiving the undercover footage, according to Politico.
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Here’s more from the report:
“I strongly disagree with my colleagues on the application of the preliminary injunction to law enforcement agencies. The injunction against Defendants sharing information with law enforcement agencies should be vacated because the public policy in favor of allowing citizens to report matters to law enforcement agencies outweighs NAF’s rights to enforce a contract,” Callahan wrote. “I find no justification for not allowing Defendants to share the tapes with any law enforcement agency that is interested.”
The court’s majority noted that the injunction doesn’t flatly prohibit disclosure to law enforcement, but requires use of a subpoena and gives the federation an opportunity to contest any such transfer.
The Center for Medical Progress responded to the court: “These videos are now unquestionably information the public is entitled to, and they are key evidence in the charges and defense of David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, but the gag order even prevents their release to law enforcement. Planned Parenthood’s barbaric abortion business, and their political cronies and tyrannical judicial sycophants, cannot cover up these videotapes and stifle free and informed public discussion.”
The news comes a day after the California Attorney General filed 15 felony charges against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress.
California requires that both parties consent to be recorded. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra alleges that Daleiden and Merritt broke the law by filming their conversations with abortionists and others without their consent.
Not surprisingly, Becerra has received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the Planned Parenthood abortion company.
The California Attorney General’s office has been going after Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress for more than a year after CMP’s undercover investigation exposed potentially illegal sales of aborted babies’ body parts at Planned Parenthood and other abortion facilities across the U.S.
In 2016, the attorney general’s office, at the time under pro-abortion Democrat Kamala Harris, who also has close connections to Planned Parenthood, raided Daleiden’s apartment in California and took his video recordings.
Texas prosecutors filed similar charges against Daleiden and Merritt last year, but the charges later were dismissed.
The Center for Medical Progress said Tuesday: “They tried the same collusion with corrupt officials in Houston, TX and failed: both the charges and the DA were thrown out. The public knows the real criminals are Planned Parenthood and their business partners like StemExpress and DV Biologics—currently being prosecuted in California—who have harvested and sold aborted baby body parts for profit for years in direct violation of state and federal law.”
The Center for Medical Progress released a new, never-before-seen video on Wednesday, showing an Arizona Planned Parenthood abortionist talking about how she performs late-term abortions and may be covering up infanticide.
DeShawn Taylor, previous medical director of Planned Parenthood of Arizona, explains to the investigators, “In Arizona, if the fetus comes out with any signs of life, we’re supposed to transport it. To the hospital.”
One investigator then asks, “Is there any standard procedure for verifying signs of of life?”
Taylor replies, “Well, the thing is, I mean the key is, you need to pay attention to who’s in the room, right?”
Dr. Taylor also mentions she was trained by Dr. Deb Nucatola. In CMP’s first-released video in July 2015, Dr. Nucatola discussed the per-specimen pricing of fetal tissue and harvesting intact hearts, lungs, livers, and brains using what appears to be a partial-birth abortion method.
