For the first time during the civil trial in the San Francisco Federal District Court, Liberty Counsel was permitted to show a four and one-half minute videoclip of former Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s senior director of medical services describing how she would “crush above” and “crush below” the baby’s thorax to obtain intact organs, and admitting she changes the position of the baby to breech to obtain an intact head during an abortion. Liberty Counsel is defending Sandra Merritt against Planned Parenthood’s civil lawsuit seeking millions of dollars.
The federal judge has prevented Liberty Counsel’s legal team from showing the videos which form the basis of the lawsuit. Judge Orrick told the Planned Parenthood attorneys that so long as their witnesses did not discuss details of the videos, they could not be shown. During her direct examination by Planned Parenthood attorneys, Dr. Deborah Nucatola opened the door for Liberty Counsel’s legal team to show the video. Horatio Mihet, Chief Litigation Counsel, argued to show the video based on Dr. Nucatola’s testimony.
Planned Parenthood attorneys objected vociferously.
After argument, the judge said he would allow the video if played on mute. Mihet objected and said that the purpose of the video was to show that 20 or more people came to, or by the restaurant table, within earshot of Nucatola talking about altering abortion procedures to extract intact body parts. He then argued if Planned Parenthood would stipulate that the conversation included sensitive subjects that could be overheard by third parties, the video would not need to be shown. Planned Parenthood refused to stipulate. The judge then allowed the video to be shown with audio.
Nucatola testified under oath yesterday that when this video, in which she describes criminal partial-birth abortion procedures in order to sell baby body parts, was released in 2015, she “felt the content was no big deal” and that she didn’t think she said anything inappropriate on the video.
In the video of her conversation at a public restaurant in Los Angeles, Nucatola described using ultrasound guidance to flip a baby in the womb to feet-first breech position, in order to extract the baby intact and harvest whole, fresh organs.
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Nucatola said, “So then you’re just kind of cognizant of where you put your graspers, you try to intentionally go above and below the thorax, so that, you know, we’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m going to basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact. And with the calvarium, in general, some people will actually try to change the presentation so that it’s not vertex, because when it’s vertex presentation, you never have enough dilation at the beginning of the case, unless you have real, huge amount of dilation to deliver an intact calvarium. So if you do it starting from the breech presentation, there’s dilation that happens as the case goes on, and often, the last, you can evacuate an intact calvarium at the end…And, we’ve been pretty successful with that. I’d say.”
The jury was visibly moved by the video in which Nucatola sipped wine while eating a salad and casually talked openly for third parties to hear how she positions the baby in the womb and then crushes above and below the thorax to harvest intact hearts, lungs, and livers. Nucatola has performed tens of thousands of abortions, including up to 200 in one week.
