Five newly-released undercover videos show Texas-based Planned Parenthood abortionists describing how they abort late-term babies alive and then dismember them to avoid the federal partial-birth abortion law and then sell the baby body parts for profit. Liberty Counsel’s client Sandra Merritt, and David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, filmed the videos in 2015 during an undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood. Then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris investigated and charged Merritt and Daleiden while the videos were blocked from public release by a court order. The videos have now been released after a congressional subpoena cleared the way for public viewing.
In March 2024, a U.S. Congressional panel held an independent hearing for the purpose of “investigating the black market of baby organ harvesting” through abortion. During the hearing, independent investigator David Daleiden presented graphic videos and testimony on how the “industrial-scale abortion business” brokers lucrative deals for fetal organs taken from live babies by dismembering viable babies in utero to “skirt” partial-birth abortion laws. On July 30, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who chaired the panel, released the full versions of the subpoenaed videos.
The videos reveal two conversations between undercover reporters and Planned Parenthood officials at the 2015 National Abortion Federation commercial trade show. In one video, Dr. Ann Schutt-Aine, the Chief Medical Officer of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, explained how to keep baby body parts intact while avoiding violating partial birth abortion (PBA) law, which prohibits killing a baby if any part of its body below the navel is outside the mother’s body.
Dr. Schutt-Aine explains, “If I’m doing a procedure, and I’m seeing that I’m in fear that it’s about to come to the umbilicus [navel], I might ask for a second set of forceps to hold the body at the cervix and pull off a leg or two, so it’s not PBA.”
In another video, Tram Nguyen, a registered nurse and the Planned Parenthood branch’s Vice President of Abortion Access, explained that some days babies are delivered to buyers highly dismembered and other days they are not.
“We just had to hurry up, whereas other days it’s more intact, where it’s like maybe only like an arm that’s disarticulated,” said Nguyen.
On May 15, 2024, the U.S. District Court in San Francisco ruled it did not have “a legal basis” to hold Daleiden in contempt of its order to not release the videos as he was under a valid congressional subpoena to do so.
Daleiden and Merritt originally released a collection of videos in 2015 following a 30-month undercover investigation that exposed Planned Parenthood regarding aborted baby body parts. Shortly thereafter, Planned Parenthood sought and won a federal injunction to prevent further release and dissemination of the videos.
In 2016, Harris met with top Planned Parenthood officials and ordered law enforcement to raid Daleiden’s home and seize the videos. Rather than investigate Planned Parenthood, Kamala Harris launched criminal investigations into Daleiden and Merritt and eventually charged them with violating California’s recording law. Daleiden and Merritt are the first undercover journalists to be charged with a crime for making undercover recordings in the public interest in the history of California.
Liberty Counsel is defending Merritt against eight felony charges and a civil lawsuit levied against her by the State of California and Planned Parenthood.
In 2019, San Francisco’s U.S. District Court heard Merritt’s civil case. Judge William Orrick, III, who is the founder of the Good Samaritan Family Resource Center that houses the Planned Parenthood of Northern California facility in its complex, presided over the case. The defense requested that Orrick recuse himself, but he refused. Judge Orrick severely restricted the evidence, and at the end, gave instructions to the jury on how they should rule on critical issues. The jury decided in favor of the abortion giant on each count, including RICO, and awarded more than $2 million in damages. The court subsequently awarded Planned Parenthood nearly $14 million in attorney’s fees and costs, for a total judgment of over $16 million. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case without any comment.
Regarding Merritt’s criminal charges, San Francisco Superior Judge Christopher Hite previously dismissed eight of the original 15 felony charges as he made factual findings that the recorded conversations were not confidential. The criminal case is expected to go to trial in early 2025.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Murdering human babies to harvest their body parts for profit is evil. These despicable acts by abortionists underscore why our client Sandra Merritt should be applauded and exonerated. The depravity of this horrible industry must stop, and justice must prevail. The videos that Kamala Harris successfully suppressed for nearly a decade have not been revealed. The horror of abortion is what Kamala Harris wanted to hide to protect Planned Parenthood. These videos pull the mask from Kamala Harris and reveal a very dark side of the abortion industry.”
