Teaser:

On a warm Tuesday afternoon in early April 2016, 27-year-old David Daleiden prepared lunch for himself in his modest one-bedroom apartment. Daleiden lived in Huntington Beach–a seaside town whose laidback California beach culture had earned it the nickname ‘Surf City, USA’ in the 1960s. Since Daleiden had gotten home late from a trip the night before, he had slept in that morning–and slept through an unexpected knock on his door at 7AM. The visitor–or, as it happened, visitors–had not given up on getting his attention, however. They had been waiting for signs of life in the apartment before they tried the door again, and this routine domestic scene was their chosen moment. While Daleiden prepared his grandmother’s chicken recipe in the kitchen, nearly a dozen California Department of Justice agents poured out of a large, white, windowless van - and marched up to his door.

Deleiden: “...Some of them had, like, K-9 dogs with them. Some of them had assault rifles. All 11 of them didn’t even fit in the apartment. It was that small. So, like, five of them went inside and were just, like, trashing the place, overturning boxes, like pulling things out of drawers, rifling through everything, the entire premises and then the other six of them were positioned around the perimeter outside with their dogs and their rifles.”

The Department of Justice agents were there for one thing: to search for and seize video footage in Daleiden’s possession – footage he had covertly filmed which allegedly showed inhumane, illegal, industrial-scale crimes at the hands of executives inside one of America’s most influential organizations. But the raid on Daleiden’s home had nothing to do with the crimes the videos exposed—it was the manner by which he had attained the footage itself that had brought the police to his door. Daleiden was the would-be ‘whistleblower’ on a large-scale criminal conspiracy within the medical industry. As a citizen journalist, he had spent years compiling evidence and in the nine months leading up to the raid, he had begun distributing videos of his undercover investigations across social media. It was this act that had put him in the crosshairs of California’s justice department and led to the raid on his home.

Was what Daleiden uncovered so damning that even the government was trying to shut him down, like some kind of Roswell, New Mexico-level cover-up? Or was his work all a manufactured hit piece by an activist with an axe to grind?

As is so often the case when this particular organization is involved: the answer depends on who you ask.

Podcast Intro:

You’re listening to Conceiving Crime, the podcast dedicated to Investigating crimes past and present involving sex, procreation, pregnancy, birth, and all things human reproduction. I’m your host, Sami Parker. See the full show notes & links to resources from this episode at ConceivingCrime.com.

Act I: Grisly Discovery 

The dramatic raid on his apartment surprised Daleiden. He saw himself as a whistle-blower, not a criminal. Daleiden believed he had the proof needed to expose the illicit actions inside of a powerful organization: Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion provider and self-professed champion of women’s healthcare. If authorities in the State of California had wanted Daleiden’s videos because they were interested in building a case against the women’s health behemoth, they likely could have simply asked for David’s cooperation–there would have been no need to ransack his apartment. Daleiden, as an anti-abortion activist, had a vested interest in taking down Planned Parenthood for reasons beyond the laws his evidence allegedly showed they had broken. The Department of Justice raid on his home indicated that it was he who was viewed as the criminal by the State of California.  

One year earlier, Daleiden and his small coalition of citizen journalists had released disconcerting body camera footage that appeared to show shady dealings on the part of prominent healthcare officials. The videos showed executives of Planned Parenthood wheeling and dealing their chosen products. On the surface, it was no big deal. Partnerships are often struck within the medical industry, and talk of profit is typical. However, the partnerships being formed in this situation had a sinister undertone that would become more obvious with each video Daleiden released. 

The First Video 

It was July 14, 2015. Americans were in the dog days of summer as wildfires ravaged the West Coast and tornadoes tore through the Midwest. But another story would steal headlines that day as Daleiden released the first video he had compiled featuring a doctor bragging about her very specific skillset while casually enjoying a meal. 

Doctor: “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 above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”

It was lunchtime inside a popular and very public bustling Los Angeles restaurant. As a waitress routinely came and went from a party of three that included the medical director of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Daleiden, and another undercover journalist, the mood was light and the conversation flowed. Dr. Nucatola munched on salad, sipped wine, and casually discussed how she could obtain the products that the undercover Daleiden’s alter ego - Robert Sarkis - was looking to buy. She shared detailed insider secrets and tips of her industry and discussed a potential partnership with the fake Sarkis - and his fake company, Biomax Procurement Services. 

But what did she mean when she said she was “very good at getting” heart, lung, and liver? 

Journalist: “What price range would you?”

Nucatola: “You know, I would throw a number out, I would say it’s probably anywhere from $30 to $100, depending on the facility and what’s involved.”

Journalist: “The $30 to $100 price range, that’s per specimen that we’re talking about, right?”

Nucatola: “Per specimen, yes.”

Nucatola: “I’d say a lot of people want liver. And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps. The kind of rate-limiting step of the procedure is calvarium. Calvarium - the head - is basically the biggest part. Most of the other stuff can come out intact.”

Each word she spoke provided more questions than answers. What did she mean when she said the calvarium (the head) - nowhere near the liver - was a “rate-limiting step” to the procedure?

Nucatola: “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 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 a 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 step, you can evacuate an intact calvarium at the end.”

Nucatola had no apparent qualms about sharing details about organ extraction openly in a public place. Any random eavesdropper in the restaurant with limited medical knowledge might’ve thought she was speaking of conventional organ donation – of how, in her line of work, to track what patients would be dying that day and which of their organs she could presumably remove from their bodies to yield the best results for future use in medical research. 

Nucatola: “If you maintain enough of a dialogue with the person who’s actually doing the procedure, so they understand what the end game is, there are little things, changes they can make in their technique to increase your success.”

Journalist: “Even though they have a set way that they do it, they’re open to changing that?” 

Nucatola: “Reasonable, if they’re reasonable people, sure. For example, so I had 8 cases yesterday. And I knew exactly what we needed, and I kinda looked at the list and said okay, this 17 weeker has 8 lams and this one - so I knew which were the cases that were probably more likely to yield what we needed, and I made my decisions according to that too, so it’s worth having a huddle at the beginning of the day and that’s what I do.”

It wasn’t a matter of voluntary organ donation, and Dr. Nucatola wasn’t just any doctor. She was professionally trained to end pregnancies, and had been doing so for at least 20 years. Now she appeared to be leading the charge on a side hustle that allegedly involved partnering with tissue procurement companies to collect organs and tissue from the fetuses she and her associates aborted. 

Each morning, Nucatola would huddle with her team to discuss the scheduled abortions for that day and which ones could yield the most usable body parts. Nucatola even appeared to say that she knew how to maneuver the preborn child into the breech position and use the ultrasound machine - meant to ensure a healthy pregnancy - to pick and choose which sections of the babies’ bodies to crush in order to keep the desired organs intact. If it sounds unethical, that’s because it was. Altering an abortion to obtain fetal body parts as Nucatola implied could be a direct violation of the 1993 National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act which states that “no alteration of the timing, method or procedures used to terminate the pregnancy was made solely for the purposes of obtaining the tissue.” But beyond that, Daleiden knew that moving the fetus to the breech position meant Nucatola was carrying out a procedure nearly identical to the federally banned D&X abortion procedure more commonly referred to as partial-birth abortion, in which the baby is delivered breech and killed when the abortionist stabs the back of the neck and suctions the brain out. Doing a D&X procedure is a federal felony punishable by up to 2 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Nucatola seemed to realize that because she referenced the loophole she used to get by the law.

Nucatola: “The Federal Abortion Ban is a law and laws are up to interpretation. So if I say on day one, ‘I do not intend to do this,’ what ultimately happens doesn’t matter.”

With these words, Daleiden felt he had a smoking gun, but on July 16, 2015, one day after the video went public, Dr. Nucatola’s boss released a video of her own.

Richards: “Hello, I’m Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Planned Parenthood provides a full range of healthcare services to millions of women, men, and young people every year, including cancer screenings, birth control, STD testing and treatment, and abortion. And we provide much more than health services. We support millions of people as they build their futures and pursue their goals. Recently an organization that opposes safe and legal abortion used secretly recorded, heavily edited videos to make outrageous claims about programs that help women donate fetal tissue for medical research. I want to be really clear. The allegation that PP profits in any way from tissue donation is not true.”

Planned Parenthood prided itself on caring about women. Daleiden’s video had called into question decades of Planned Parenthood’s pro-woman, non-profit messaging. Thus began the David and Goliath of all “he said, she said” battles. Would Richards’ claim of innocence be enough to hold America’s trust through what happened next? 

The Second Video

The video that Daleiden released appeared to expose Dr. Nucatola, medical director at Planned Parenthood, as a proponent of fetal body part trafficking. She wasn’t the only one at Planned Parenthood blindsided by the release of a Daleiden video. 

Before viewers - or Planned Parenthood - had time to recover from the shock of the first video, Daleiden released a second video a week later on July 21, 2015. This video featured Dr. Mary Gatter, the medical director of Planned Parenthood Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley. 1.5 million viewers to date have watched to see what, if any, secrets she would spill. 

Journalist: “And are we agreed that $100 would keep you happy?”

Gatter: “Well, let me agree to find out from other affiliates in California what they’re getting and if they’re getting substantially more, then we can discuss it then. And you know, the money is not the important thing for me, but having to be big enough that it is worthwhile for me.”

Journalist: “But it is something to talk about, I mean it's one of the first things that you brought up, right? So…”

Journalist: “If we’re able to get a liver-thymus pair, you know, maybe that is $75 per specimen. And so, that’s for you, you know, a liver-thymus pair and that’s $150, versus if we can get liver-thymus, brain hemisphere, and all that, and then, so that, that protects us so that we’re not paying for what we can’t use.”

Gatter: “Let me just figure out what others are getting and if this is in the ballpark, then it’s fine, and if it’s still low, then we can bump it up. I want a Lamborghini.”

Journalist: “What?”

Gatter: “I said I want a Lamborghini.”

Was she joking about the sports car? That’d be left for viewers to decide. But it wasn’t the only comment she made that raised eyebrows. Gatter had previously worked at a different California Planned Parenthood affiliate that had been dabbling in fetal body part donations when she left. She appeared well-versed in the matter. 

Journalist: What would you expect for intact tissue? What sort of compensation? What sort of…”

Gatter: “Well, why don’t you start by telling me what you’re used to paying?”

Journalist: “I don’t think so. I would like to know what would make you happy? What would work for you?”

Gatter: “Well, you know in negotiations the person who throws out the figure first is at a loss, right?”

Journalist: “No, I don’t look at it that way. I know you want to play that game.”

Gatter: “I don’t want to lowball.”

Journalist: “You know what, if you low ball, I’ll act pleasantly surprised and you’ll know it’s a lowball. What I want to know is what would work for you. Don’t lowball it. Tell me what you really…”
Gatter: “$75 a specimen.”

Journalist: “Oh that’s way too low. Really, that’s way too low.”

Gatter: “I was going to say $50 because I’ve been in places that did $50 too. See, we’re not in it for the money. We don’t want to be in the position of being accused of selling the tissue. On the other hand there are costs associated with the use of our space.”

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards was forced back on damage control duty. This time, she spoke to ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos.

George: “The Washington Post columnist has pointed out that charging a fee for this material doesn’t…”

Cecile: “It’s not a fee. It’s not a fee. It’s actually just the cost of transmitting this material to research institutes.”

[Break]

George: “The second issue they raise is the tapes appear to describe times when the clinics adjust the abortion procedure to better harvest the fetal organs.”

Cecile: “It’s absolutely not done. And I’ve talked to doctors all across the country…”
George: “But it does appear that that’s what's being described in these tapes.”

Cecile: “Well it's because these tapes have been edited and they’ve tried to entrap doctors to say things. And listen, I stand behind the health care that we provide at Planned Parenthood. Women trust Planned Parenthood. And I look forward to anyone who wants to look into our policies and procedures. I mean, we’ve said that to Congress. The facts are …”

George: “So when these doctors are talking about - and this gets graphic - they’re talking about less crunchy ways to perform these abortions so that the organs can be preserved. What’s happening there? Are they just lying?”

Cecile: “No, that’s not. All of this is just taken out of context. What happens in this country at Planned Parenthood and other hospitals is that women in a very few places are allowed to donate fetal tissue for life-saving medical research. Research that is, you know, developing cures for Parkinson's and for Alzheimer's. Even the ebola vaccine. To me, this isn’t something that actually should be criticized or made fun of. This is actually laudable. That women and their families choose to make fetal tissue donations in order to potentially save lives of other folks.”

George: “As long as the procedure is never altered. And you're stating that unequivocally?”

Cecile: “That’s right.”
George: “Any other reforms Planned Parenthood’s going to take in the wake of this?” 

Cecile: “Well obviously, we, you know, the most disgusting part of this to me is that these folks lied. Lied to gain access to clinics.”

There was no doubt that someone was lying–the question was who. Either Cecile Richards was being intentionally deceptive, or David Daleiden was an activist hell-bent on taking down Planned Parenthood with zero regard for the “essential” health care it provides to women–or the truth. 

In August 2015, Daleiden released a video featuring Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast’s director of research Melissa Farrell.

Farrell: “Yeah, and so if we alter our process, and we are able to obtain intact fetal cadavers, then we can make it part of the budget, that any dissections are this and splitting the specimens into different shipments is this. I mean that’s.. It’s all just a matter of line items.”

These words seemed incriminating, but if any video would convince politicians and law officers of illegal activity on the part of Planned Parenthood abortionists, it was the one that Daleiden’s group had released three weeks earlier, in late July 2015. It featured Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains VP and Medical Director Dr. Savita Ginde who appeared to consider how to classify fetal body part sales so that they didn’t look like… well… sales. 

“I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a thymus, maybe I have. I don’t know. I know I’ve seen livers, I’ve seen stomachs, I’ve seen plenty of neural tissue. Usually you can see the whole brain usually come out. You know when you get to 17 or 18 week, ‘cause we do some of those, that’s when you’re doing a lot more of D&E and you might get larger. So that’s where we’d have to do a little bit of training with the providers or something to make sure they didn’t crush, or– 

Journalist: “So it’s a matter of just training, it sounds like, to a provider?”

Ginde: “I think so. I mean, it’s hard to know how their specimens come out right now because it’s not like we’ve ever been looking. We haven’t been looking. 

Journalist: “Uh-huh. Right.”

Journalist: “Right, it’s not you–”

Ginde: We’d have to kind of see the baseline of how things are getting extracted now, and then see if we could do any work with them to maybe be a little bit more gentle. So I feel like if you’re talking to other Planned Parenthoods, we sort of all have to be on the same page almost to the point where we have to disclose to each other that we’re all doing this so if anyone gets called out or runs with it, that we’re all like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were doing this, oh I’m doing this too.’ I think we have to be coordinated with each other.”

Journalist: “To keep the story straight.”

Ginde: “Yeah, well and to make sure that we’re all saying the same thing and that the CEOs are all saying the same thing.”

Ginde: “Are the other Planned Parenthoods doing this just through research or are they just doing it as a stand-alone contract? Because even though we’re doing it through research, if it comes up as someone else is just doing it as a business sort of venture, it just puts a different spin on it.

Ginde: “Putting it under the research gives us a little bit of a, a little sort of overhang sort of over the whole thing.”

Buyer: “It makes it look better.”

Ginde: “Yeah and in public I think it makes a lot more sense for it to be in the research vein than, I’d say, business venture.”

Buyer: It’s how we talk about it. 

Ginde: “Because if you have someone in a really anti state that’s going to be doing this for you, they’re probably going to get caught.”

Ginde: “We don’t want to get called, you know, selling fetal parts across states.”

Buyer: “Neither do we!”

Ginde brought the undercover journalists to examine the parts of freshly aborted fetuses. Together, they examined the remains of an 11-week, six-day-old aborted child, and then appeared to discuss pricing, including a price “per specimen.” But, this was an embryo….not a baby. Planned Parenthood has been clear for years that at this point in pregnancy, embryos are clumps of tissue. How could clumps of tissue provide intact organs for researchers to experiment with?

Journalist: “Is that the heart?”

Staffer: “I think so, here’s the heart. My fingers will smush it if I try to get it out. The heart is right there.”

Ginde: “So would you call that intact?”

Journalist: “These are intact kidneys, yes.”

Ginde: “Because if I looked at that, I’d be like, that’s good to go.”

Journalist: “Oh, yeah.” 

Staffer: “Five stars!”

Journalist: “There was like three or four samples we could have taken out of the 11.6. If we were doing like $50 to $75 per specimen that’d be like $200 to $300, and we’d be comfortable with that. But stuff like this, we don’t want to be like just a flat fee of like $200 and then it’s like…”

Ginde: “No, and the, I think the per item thing works a little better just because we can see how much we can get out of it.“

Ginde’s statement about charging “per item” to “see how much we can get out of it” seemed to put a giant hole in Richards’ story. But what was particularly a bad look for Planned Parenthood was how the conversation began to sound like a warped game of ‘I Spy.’

Staffer: “Here’s some organs for you. They’re all attached. Here’s a stomach, kidney, heart, adrenal, I don’t know what else is in there. Arms, I don't see the legs. Do you see the legs? I didn’t really look.”

Journalist: “There you go! Got all of them right there.”

Staffer: “And another boy!”

The Planned Parenthood staffer was either joking or could tell that this ‘clump of tissue’ was a boy with distinguishable arms and legs, stomach, kidney and heart.

Act II:

The story of how these undercover videos came to be recorded began in 2010, when a young reporter, David Daleiden, tuned into a 20/20 documentary that had first aired in the year 2000 before fading into obscurity. The episode was entitled “Parts for Sale” and featured a former employee of the Anatomic Gift Foundation, an independent, non-profit, anatomic donation organization that was founded in 1994. That former employee turned whistleblower, Dean Alberty, revealed alleged insider information that compelled Daleiden to begin his own investigation. Alberty claimed that as a tissue procurement specialist, he was tasked with harvesting body parts from babies who had been aborted at Planned Parenthood facilities - and that some of the babies were alive when their organs were harvested. In the 20/20 episode, he discussed the process of quote “cutting open the chest and seeing the heart was still beating” as he removed the child’s tissue and organs. Daleiden dug deeper into the ins and outs of this practice of harvesting body parts from aborted children, reading books and analyzing studies. He set out to expose what he saw as an unethical - and illegal - practice. 

In 2013, he formed the Center for Medical Progress, launching a fake tissue procurement company called BioMax Procurement Services. He and his team, including journalist Sandra Merritt, made fake IDs and posed as fetal tissue and organ buyers, secretly recording Planned Parenthood executive officials during meetings and at National Abortion Federation meetings. They collected hours of video footage and then edited that footage to get to the meat of the investigation - statements made by Planned Parenthood officials and tissue procurement company employees that appeared to expose illegal fetal body part sales, negotiations, and transactions.

Daleiden began researching Advanced Bioscience Research (ABR), a business that was allegedly buying body parts from its partner: Planned Parenthood Mar Monte in Southern California. Daleiden also gathered information on the fetal procurement company StemExpress (now called CGT Global), where he claims to have found a drop-down menu for ordering body parts displayed openly on the company’s website. Believing he had found evidence of illegal fetal body part sales and trafficking being carried out by Planned Parenthood, Daleiden wanted to uncover the truth. 

The method he used to get this information is what led to the fateful raid on David Daleiden’s home. Most of his material was collected by the use of hidden body cameras, which Planned Parenthood and its partners claimed was illegal.

California law prohibits the recording of a private conversation without the other person’s consent, and the person who carries out the recording can face criminal charges. There is, however, a loophole. If the recorded conversation takes place in a public setting or a setting in which the parties can reasonably expect to be overheard, the consent rule does not apply, meaning the persons being recorded don’t need to consent. But was it a big enough loophole to save Daleiden from legal trouble? 

Almost immediately upon the release of the first video, Energy and Commerce Committee leaders and the House Judiciary Committee launched investigations into Planned Parenthood within both committees’ jurisdictions. They wanted to discover if what Daleiden was alleging about Planned Parenthood was true. Was it indeed profiting from the sales of fetal tissue and organs, were abortionists changing procedures to maximize the harvesting of fetal tissue and organs, were patients sufficiently provided with informed consent regarding fetal organ use, were any federal laws were violated, and if so, was the Department of Justice aware, and what, if any, congressional action was needed? 

The Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter to the then-president of Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards, requesting an interview with Dr. Nucatola, but she was deemed ‘unavailable.’ Instead Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosley, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and one of the organization’s primary spokespeople - a professional spin-doctor, was able to meet with the committee. She reassured the committee members that each Planned Parenthood affiliate was responsible for ensuring they acted in compliance with all state and federal laws when procuring fetal tissue for research companies. Planned Parenthood accused Daleiden of heavily doctoring the videos, including the full, unedited footage that was released, claiming that he had deliberately mistranscribed dialogue. As the alleged video evidence piled up, Planned Parenthood was playing a constant game of defense.

The tables turned when the National Abortion Federation filed a lawsuit against Daleiden’s Center for Medical Progress and legally requested that a court block additional footage from inside its meetings from being released. 

Daleiden had signed confidentiality agreements to attend National Abortion Federation meetings. Judge William Orrick, the presiding judge, had a personal connection to one of the key players that left his ability to rule on the case in jeopardy. It turned out that Judge Orrick had been a Planned Parenthood donor and was a board member of the Good Samaritan Family Resource Center in San Francisco, which had opened a Planned Parenthood clinic inside its own headquarters. Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific operated as a ‘Key Partner’ of the center. Despite this clear conflict of interest, Orrick refused to recuse himself and then ruled in favor of the National Abortion Federation, granting the restraining order against the undercover videos - an injunction that would later become permanent and threaten to derail Daleiden’s claims. 

For the first time in the 70-year history of California’s undercover recording law, undercover journalists faced legal ramifications for exposing what they saw to be a ghastly crime.

Daleiden, however, pressed on, continuing to release new videos, each with its own disturbing reveal. In mid-August 2015, Holly O’Donnell, a former StemExpress employee who had participated in organ harvesting, shared details about the practice that sent shockwaves through the nation. She spoke on camera about being told to take the babies and blood from women without their consent. The most disturbing detail revealed was that some of the babies aborted late in pregnancy had beating hearts. 

Holly: “I see the jar come out, goes into the path lab and Jessica, I can hear, is preparing it, rinsing out the jar, rinsing out the linen - the wrapping that catches it, dumping it in the strainer, rinsing it off, putting water in the pie dish, and getting it ready for the doctor. So then I hear her call my name, ‘Hey Holly, come over here. I want you to see something kind of cool. This is kind of neat.’ So I’m over here and the moment I see it, I’m just flabbergasted. This is the most gestated fetus and the closest thing to a baby I’ve seen. And she says, ‘I wanna show you something’ and so she has one of her instruments and she just taps the heart and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus and its heart is beating and I don’t know what to think.” 

A September 15, 2015 release featured multiple conversations between the journalists and abortion executives, including Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, senior medical advisor of Planned Parenthood, who shared astonishing details about her work including that all of the human specimens Planned Parenthood secured for tissue procurement companies are “fresh!”

Westhoff: “Certainly everything we provide - oh gonads! Oh my God, gonads! Everything we provide is fresh.”

Westoff: “Obviously, we would have the potential for a huge PR issue by doing this.”

That same concern for a PR crisis was expressed by Dr. Vanessa Cullins, Vice President of External Medical Affairs for Planned Parenthood who told the journalists: 

Cullins: “This is important. This could destroy your company and us if we don’t time those conversations correctly.“

Deb VanDerhei, national director of the consortium of abortion providers also met with the undercover journalists and revealed even more damaging details about the fetal body part trafficking scandal. She asked Daleiden specifically about compensation. 

VanDerhei: “Do you, can I ask you about remuneration?”

Buyer: “Yeah, yeah.”

VanDerhei: “What’s your policy and what have you been…”

Buyer: “We’ve … however they want to work it is fine with us. Typically most places are doing per specimen, because it just makes the most sense because that’s how they work and that’s how we work as well.”

VanDerhei: “Well, one of the things that we advise, our affiliate to do is to really consider that carefully. That might be a different situation with um, independents, though I have been talking to the executive director of the National Abortion Federation. We’re trying to figure this out as an industry about how we’re going to manage remuneration because the headlines would be a disaster.”

A separate video released in October 2015 appeared to show Dr. Amna Dermish, an abortionist for Planned Parenthood in Austin, Texas, discussing how to abort a baby in order to harvest the child’s brain. 

Dermish: “So usually what I do is if it’s a breech presentation, I’ll remove the extremities first, the lower extremities, and then go for the spine and sort of bring it down that way, and then”

Dermish: “And if it’s cephalic, I’ll try and get the cal first but if I’m struggling to get the cal, usually it’s a function of how good my dilation is, oftentimes it’s hard to get around the cal. Especially the 20 weekers are a lot harder, versus the 18 weekers and so at that point I’ll switch to breech.”

She admits she has never had the calvarium - the head - of the baby come out intact, but she is willing to try. 

Daleiden’s videos fueled the already heated debate over whether Planned Parenthood deserved to be funded by taxpayers. On September 18, 2015, the House of Representatives approved two bills: the Defund Planned Parenthood Act and the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. But the bills found no long-term success. Eleven days later the Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing on Planned Parenthood’s Taxpayer Funding at which Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards testified and was questioned on Planned Parenthood’s lobbying efforts, lavish expenditures and salaries, and the over $500 million it then received in taxpayer funding. Richards denied that the organization was profiting off of fetal body parts. 

Richards: “The outrageous accusations leveled against Planned Parenthood based on heavily doctored videos are offensive and categorically untrue. I realize though that the facts have never gotten in the way of these campaigns to block women from health care they need and deserve.”

During that hearing, Rep. Elijah Cummings shared quotes from Nucatola that went directly against Daleiden’s claims, calling the validity of the videos into question.

Cummings: “I want to do some quotes from some of the stuff that Mr. Daleiden left on the cutting floor when he was doing his, working with the tapes. Dr. Deborah Nucatola said, and I quote, ‘to them this is not a service they should be making money for’ end quote. That was left on the floor. She said also, ‘no,’ quote ‘no one’s going to see this as a money making thing’ end of quote. She went on to say ‘we’re not looking to make money from this. Our goal is to keep access available.’ end of quote.” 

Was the footage altered as Richards and Cummings claimed? Planned Parenthood hired Fusion GPS—the D.C.-based opposition research and intelligence firm now best known for its involvement in the 2016 Trump/Clinton presidential race—to analyze the videos. They determined that the videos contained intentionally deceptive edits, missing footage, and inaccurately transcribed conversations. However, Fusion GPS also found that Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress did not fabricate the dialogue and there was no widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation. Meanwhile, the pro-life legal group Alliance Defending Freedom asked cybersecurity and forensic analysis company Coalfire Systems to examine the 10 “full-footage videos,” which were released simultaneously with the edited videos, and according to that review, the videos were not manipulated. The report found that any missing footage in the edited versions was of “non-pertinent” events such as meals and bathroom breaks.  Two different reviews, two different determinations. 

On September 30, the Energy and Commerce Committee approved legislative language to stop states from receiving federal dollars for abortionists including Planned Parenthood. On October 8, 2015, the Judiciary Committee held its second in a series of hearings titled Planned Parenthood Exposed: Examining Abortion Procedures in Medical Ethics at the Nation’s Largest Abortion Provider. Just days later, on October 13, Planned Parenthood announced it would stop accepting reimbursements for fetal tissue. But anyone who thought that to be an admission of guilt would be wrong. The legal drama was only just beginning.

On January 15, 2016, Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against the Center for Medical Progress. Presiding over the case was the same Judge Orrick. The clinic he had once been associated with - Planned Parenthood Shasta Pacific - was a plaintiff in the case. Once again he refused to recuse himself. Planned Parenthood alleged that Daleiden engaged in wire and mail fraud that violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (or RICO) Act, unlawfully invaded privacy and engaged in illegal secret recordings and trespassing. In an interesting twist, Planned Parenthood never sued the Center for Medical Progress for defamation - meaning Planned Parenthood did not legally claim that what executives were shown saying in the videos was false. Daleiden argued that he and his fellow undercover journalists were simply exercising their First Amendment rights and their attorneys attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed. Judge Orrick rejected that argument and the lawsuit was allowed to proceed.

From there, things appeared to go from bad to worse for Daleiden and his team.

In August 2016, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick asked a Texas court to review Daleiden’s undercover footage to search for wrongdoing on the part of the abortion business. His plan backfired – a Houston grand jury found no evidence of illegal activity by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast and instead announced criminal charges against Daleiden and Merritt. Daleiden was indicted for “prohibition of the purchase and sale of human organs” and he and Merritt were both indicted for “tampering with a government record.” Daleiden maintained that he used the same undercover techniques that investigative journalists have used for decades. And he also pointed out the obvious -  if he could be indicted on charges of purchasing fetal tissue, then there must have been an entity acting as the seller of fetal tissue. That hypothetical seller was, of course, Planned Parenthood, who had just been cleared of illegal activity.

Meanwhile, back in California, two judges - one in Los Angeles and Orrick - each heard privacy violation cases against Daleiden and each ruled that his videos were misleadingly edited to support his claim that Planned Parenthood was illegally selling fetal body parts from children it had aborted. The Los Angeles Times also claimed to have access to unseen videos in which Daleiden coached at least one former tissue procurement worker on her statements. And on March 30, 2016, it published its own report stating that Daleiden’s work should not be considered journalism. 

The hits kept coming for Daleiden. By April 2016, two dozen states had opened and closed investigations into Planned Parenthood based on Daleiden’s accusations and each ruled that they found no evidence that Planned Parenthood or other abortionists had profited from the sales of fetal body parts. Of course, just because it wasn’t happening in those states, did not mean Planned Parenthood wasn’t selling body parts in the more abortion-friendly states. Pro-abortion California, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Virginia each refused to pursue investigations into the videos' allegations.

It was that same month that California DOJ agents raided Daleiden’s home. And the raid had been carried out at the request of then California Attorney General and future Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, whose donor base included Planned Parenthood. Daleiden later spoke about the raid with EWTN:

Daleiden: “Planned Parenthood specifically requesting of Kamala Harris's office that they would specifically go in and seize the videos from me so they were trying to take all the the raw footage away and trying to do a huge cover-up they weren't successful at doing that.”

Property receipts obtained by the Los Angeles Times show that agents took computer hard drives and materials from Planned Parenthood conferences as well as California IDs issued to the fake personas Brianna Allen and Robert Sarkis - Daleiden’s fake identity. Following the search and seizure effort, Life Legal Defense Foundation, a California-based advocacy law firm, accused Harris of quote… “loyalty to Planned Parenthood” that “requires her to turn a blind eye to the organization’s criminal activities.” Instead of investigating Planned Parenthood for potential illegal body part trafficking, said the foundation’s director Alexandra Snyder, Harris had “launched an inquisition into David Daleiden.”

Was the future vice president of the United States in cahoots with Planned Parenthood? Abortion opponents certainly believed so. But the debates over whether the tapes were overly edited and whether it was Daleiden or Planned Parenthood who had broken the law were still unresolved.

Act III: - Small victories

Two months after Harris signed the warrant to have agents seize Daleiden’s recordings, a Texas judge dismissed the criminal misdemeanor charge against Daleiden and Merritt regarding the purchase and sale of human organs due to a technicality in the prosecutor’s indictment. The district attorney’s office said it would not fight that decision - a small win for the pro-life journalists. 

Another small victory came in January 2017, when StemExpress, which had sued the Center for Medical Progress after failing to get a court to block videos from being released, withdrew its lawsuit.

But any feelings of triumph for the undercover journalists would not last long. Within months, on March 28, 2017, Daleiden and Merritt were charged with 15 felonies in California - one for each of the abortion workers they had filmed without consent and one for criminal conspiracy to invade privacy. Daleiden’s attorney was quick to seek a dismissal of the charges based on the fact that Daleiden’s and Merritt’s accusers were not named in court documents, making it impossible for the journalists to defend themselves against their accusers - a violation of their Sixth Amendment rights. By mid-June, 14 of the felony charges were dismissed. But that win was short-lived. 

On July 3 of the same year, Daleiden and Merritt learned that all 15 of the felony charges against them were re-filed with more specific language. Harris had moved on to her new position as state senator, but California’s new attorney general, Xavier Becerra, was clearly not going to back down. Nine days later, Judge Orrick - the one with the conflict of interest - found Daleiden and his attorneys in contempt of court after links to the videos Orrick had blocked appeared on the attorneys’ website. The attorneys argued that the footage was released legally because it had been Becerra who had made the video public when he filed the criminal proceedings based on the blocked footage. Still, Orrick ordered the videos be taken down - a decision that was met with shock by many who saw it as an attack on Daleiden’s free speech. The U.S. Reporters’ Committee even filed a “friend of the Court” submission in support of Daleiden and in opposition to Orrick’s restraining order. But on August 31, Orrick ordered Daleiden and Merritt to be fined nearly $200,000 for releasing the videos that Becerra had already made public.

Still dealing with the aftermath of that decision, in September 2019, a hearing was finally held to determine if Merritt and Daleiden would go to trial over those 15 felony charges. Daleiden’s attorneys argued during the hearing, that the warrant used by the California Department of Justice to enter his home and seize computers, digital storage devices, and his fake identity documents back in April 2016 was unjustified. The court ruled against Daleiden, stating that he wasn’t protected under California’s Shield Law for citizen journalists. 

That same month, Daleiden was dealt another blow as he faced a civil jury trial brought by Planned Parenthood in federal court. In that civil case, Daleiden and Merritt along with their associates Troy Newman, Albin Rhomberg, and Gerardo Adrian Lopez were accused of fraud, breach of contract, unlawful recording of conversations, civil conspiracy, and violation of the federal anti-racketeering law. 

While under oath during that trial, Planned Parenthood staffers admitted to some shocking truths that seemed to validate everything Daleiden had uncovered. While on the stand, Nuctalota, under the name Doe 9 to protect her identity, was questioned on the validity of her statements in the videos. She initially appeared to lie, saying the videos were edited to make her say things she didn’t say. But when defense attorneys moved to impeach her because her new sworn testimony did not match her previous sworn deposition testimony in the civil case, she admitted that the video did indeed depict her statements accurately. 

The attorney asked, “You’re not claiming that any of the videos of yourself that we watched together yesterday or this morning were somehow edited or altered to make it appear that you were saying things that you didn’t actually say, are you?”

Nucatola replied,: “Of the clips that we watched here together? No.”

With her simple “No,” Nucatloa seemed to reveal that the video clips used in court were not altered to change her statements.

The most chilling testimony, however, came from Perrin Larton, Procurement Manager for Planned Parenthood’s partner Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc. She admitted under oath that some babies harvested for parts are born alive with their hearts still beating as their organs are harvested. 

Also at the trial was an experienced abortionist - but surprisingly, he was there to testify on behalf of Daleiden and Merritt. Dr. Forrest Smith, an abortionist for 50 years, verified that, based on a Planned Parenthood conference presentation, babies are born alive at Planned Parenthood locations. He testified that Planned Parenthood abortionists “fully intend to put the uterus into labor” without killing the baby first.

He added: “There’s no question in my mind that at least some of these fetuses were live births.”

And if feticide is not used, Smith told the court, “No question it’s alive.”

Despite these shocking revelations, the jury would rule that Daleiden and his journalists had caused harm to Planned Parenthood, and it awarded Planned Parenthood more than $2 million including compensation for security upgrades and changes to how the abortion business vets companies that it partners with. The jury also found the journalists guilty of conspiring to violate the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.   

After this, Daleiden began to fight back. By November, he had filed a lawsuit against former Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains abortionist Dr. Savita Ginde for defamation. She had published a book and held a TEDx presentation in which she claimed that the Center for Medical Progress videos were “dubbed, “spliced and diced” and that she did not say what she appeared to be saying. 

Dr. Ginde: “In July of 2015 following a multi-year infiltration led by a well-known anti-abortion extremist, a series of deceptively edited videos were released attempting to implicate me in the selling of fetal tissue. This extremist had created a fake company and proposed a bogus research proposal to Planned Parenthood and as a result he was able to gain meetings and discussions with many Planned Parenthood staff including myself and he recorded all of it and then he went back home and he spliced and diced and created the story that he wanted to tell. Completely fake. In the videos in which I'm featured some words are taken out of context others are even dubbed in and actions are attributed to me that never actually happened … “

Was she telling the truth? Did Daledien dub the videos to make it look like Ginde and other Planned Parenthood workers were selling fetal body parts - or was she lying? Nucatola had already testified that what she was saying in the videos was depicted accurately by Daleiden. But the courts had been ruling against Daleiden for months. No one seemed to know who to believe.  

Despite the claims she made in her TedX talk, Ginde had been filmed appearing to discuss how to ensure Planned Parenthood didn’t get caught selling body parts, and her colleagues had admitted under oath that the videos accurately represented what they had said in the videos. 

Ginde: “So I feel like if you’re talking to other Planned Parenthoods, we sort of all have to be on the same page … almost to the point that we have to disclose to each other that we’re all doing this, so if anyone gets called out or runs with it, that we’re all like, “Oh, I didn’t know you were doing this, oh, I’m doing this too.” We have to be, um… I think we have to be coordinated with each other. … 

Journalist: “To keep the story straight.” 

Ginder: “Well, and to make sure that we’re all saying the same thing. And that the CEOs are all saying the same thing.

Journalist: “I mean, we all know that, for example, compensation. I want to come in and pay you top dollar because I know what you’re going to be facing, and I want you to be happy, I want to make sure our suppliers are happy. So, compensation, okay, your cost is negligent, so it could look like we’re paying you for specimens. So let’s talk about it correctly. We all know that, yes, that’s what we’re doing–”

Ginder: “It’s processing and time, and…

Journalist: “Exactly, so yes, I am paying you, but how we’re talking about it out there in the public square.”

Ginder: Putting it under the research gives us a little bit of a, a little sort of overhang over the whole thing. … And in public I think it makes sense for it to be in the research vein than, I’d say, a business venture. Because if you have someone in a really anti state that’s going to be doing this for you, they’re probably going to get caught.”

And she wasn’t the only one – In another video, Melissa Farrell, director of research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast and clinic director Tram Nguyen, discussed Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s attempts to encourage affiliates to participate in the so-called donating of body parts from the babies they abort, and in it, Farrell pointed out that some affiliates believe the practice to be illegal.

Farrell: “Remember when I first got here? It was like, you have to have this form, it has to be like this…”

Tram: “And you had to have this particular consent form, it was very specific, yeah. No. that’s what Kristen was saying. They are encouraging more participation but they don’t want to get too into the mix of it.”

Farrell: “Mhm, interesting, okay cool. Any idea why the other affiliates in Texas think it’s illegal?”

Tram: “Really?”

Were words put into their mouths as well? 

Conclusion:

It didn’t seem to matter what Planned Parenthood executives were alleged to have said or done. A jury had already awarded the organization over $2 million in damages during the civil trial, and they were about to get even more. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Christopher Hite announced that there was enough evidence to bring a criminal trial against Daleiden and Merritt.

In February 2020, Daleiden and Merritt pleaded not guilty to ten felony counts related to their undercover reporting on Planned Parenthood’s alleged trafficking of aborted baby body parts after six of the original 15 charges were dropped, and another was added regarding the use of fake IDs. 

In May 2020 came yet another bombshell. Daleiden released a video that showed Planned Parenthood staffers, including Tram Nguyen and Dr. Deborah Nucatola, admitting under oath that they intended to move forward with the fetal sales deals with the fake BioMax despite their previous claims to the contrary - and they admitted that they knew Planned Parenthood was receiving payments for fetal body parts. Nucatola even stated that she never bothered to ensure everything was being carried out legally at Planned Parenthood. In a court filing, Planned Parenthood said that its employees did indeed speak “the words recorded in the videos.” 

Regardless of all of this, in December 2020, Judge Orrick ordered Daleiden to pay $13.6 million in attorney fees and costs to Planned Parenthood. This was on top of the $2.4 million in damages a court had already awarded to the organization. Even the Supreme Court wouldn’t step in - after Daleiden appealed the $2.4 million decision, the Court refused to hear the case and returned it to the lower court. 

In April of 2024, nine years after the legal cases began, Judge Orrick - though he did not issue a ruling - had a surprising change of mind or perhaps heart, stating that he no longer thought Daleiden violated the permanent injunction blocking him from releasing video footage of National Abortion Federation meetings when he republished that footage after it was shared by the attorney general as part of a lawsuit. A tiny win for Daleiden, but Planned Parenthood had still been awarded $14 million. 

Daleiden, however, wasn’t finished. In November 2024, he released never-before-seen emails that revealed a Planned Parenthood San Diego Research Plan to abort up to 2,500 viable healthy babies “ranging from 4 to 23 weeks [6 months] gestational age” who showed “evidence of fetal heart activity by ultrasound immediately prior to the dilation and evacuation procedure.” It would then provide those babies’ bodies to the University of California San Diego for experimentation.

Most recently, there have been numerous bombshells about the use of aborted babies’ body parts in horrifying animal experiments including at The University of Pittsburgh, which worked with Planned Parenthood to obtain the fetal body parts of aborted babies. In 2021, Daleiden testified before the Pennsylvania House Health Committee and exposed the relationship between Planned Parenthood and the university, as well as the experiments. He called the university a “hub for some of the most barbaric experiments carried out on late-term aborted human infants… funded by the United States Government.” Those experiments included scalping second trimester babies and stitching those scalps onto mice - all paid for by U.S. taxpayers via the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s NIAID office.

None of these revelations about fetal body parts being used in experimentations seemed to have an effect on Planned Parenthood’s standing–legally, at least. No matter what he did to expose the truth, Daleiden was the underdog in the fight and a win didn’t seem possible. 

It wouldn’t be until January of 2025 that the criminal case against the journalists would come to a close. Daleiden and Merritt ultimately pleaded “no contest” to one charge of unlawful recording of confidential communication in exchange for the dropping of the other felony charges. As part of that plea deal, Daleiden and Merritt would receive “no jail time, no fines, no admission of wrongdoing, and no probation.” But while they called it a pro-life win, others saw it quite differently. 

The newest California Attorney General, Rob Bonta, boasted that he had successfully secured felony convictions against Daleiden and Merritt, saying, “Make no mistake: the defendants are now convicted felons. They are guilty of feloniously recording private communications.” Was he lying? An excerpt from documentation states that the court was clear: “no plea” would not be accepted as a felony. Daleiden ordered Bonta to retract his statement to no avail.

Daleiden and Merritt had set out to expose what they saw to be disturbing crimes, but instead they made history that they had never intended to make. Until now, no undercover journalist in California had ever before been convicted for their efforts to record criminal activity. They were the first. 

Both Daleiden and Bonta claim success–or at least vindication–but the real winner so far appears to be Planned Parenthood, where it remains business as usual. Despite a ding to its reputation among some of its American supporters, throughout the decade-long legal battle it never lost federal funding and today takes in nearly $700 million a year from US taxpayers. It continues to deny that it ever sold fetal body parts while Daleiden continues to maintain that it did and that his videos are proof. He may also have more material to share. 

In some sense, the issues at the heart of David Daleiden’s legal battle remain unresolved–at least as far as the public narrative is concerned. People who are disposed to distrust Planned Parenthood’s motives and commitment to following the law and dispensing supposedly “necessary” healthcare from altruistic motives were given damning evidence exposing the organization for fraudulent, illegal and wicked practices. Those committed to the political goals of open access to abortion or even the self-professed politically neutral can take Planned Parenthood’s victim of activist journalists' narrative at face value, if they so choose. This case exposes the politically fractured nature of journalism in modern American life, and how difficult it is to parse truth from spin when it comes to the subject of abortion. When it’s impossible to escape the accusation that you are spinning reality to suit your agenda, speaking the truth starts to feel like the law of diminishing returns on display. Through all these legal battles David Daleiden has never backed down from the original underlying claims: that Planned Parenthood profits from killing human children and dissecting them for parts, and using legal loopholes to hide this fact from the public. If he’s right, then he’s spent a decade fighting lawfare from the very people whose job it is to hold Planned Parenthood accountable.

We are all called to look at the evidence and be journalists ourselves, carefully considering each question the case raised. We must ask ourselves: did Daleiden and Merritt deserve to be the only journalists in California to be criminally prosecuted for an undercover investigation–and what were the motivates of the State of California in pursuing such a legal case, when by the end of ten years of legal battles no one ended up in jail and the contested videos are still publicly available? Was Daleiden’s undercover work based on exposing the truth, or was it politically motivated from a desire to shut down Planned Parenthood—and are these two things even mutually exclusive?

Aside from the criminal accusations against Planned Parenthood, the criminal accusations against David, and the ensuing legal battles, for many the most shocking revelation in all of this was the truth about what abortion actually is: the killing of young human beings, through dismemberment, lethal injection, or other means. Daleiden's work is not just relevant legally, but morally. Do we as a society really approve of treating the youngest members of the human family in this way?