Am I going soft?
I am almost starting to feel sorry for David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, the two antiabortion zealots who infiltrated Planned Parenthood in 2014 intending to bring it down for illegally selling aborted baby parts but instead have found themselves facing huge fines and, potentially, prison time.
Using fake identities, fake drivers' licenses and fake business cards, this pair lied over and over, misrepresenting themselves as officials of an imaginary biomedical company, BioMax Procurement Services, in a failed attempt to entrap Planned Parenthood officials into admitting they traffic in fetal tissue for profit.
As part of their elaborate ruse, Daleiden and Merritt infiltrated meetings of the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood in several states. After months of trying, they inveigled Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood Federation of America's senior director of medical services at the time, into a lunch meeting and secretly recorded her discussing how the organization procures fetal tissue for scientific research and what it charges researchers to cover its costs — not to earn a profit, which Nucatola noted repeatedly.
(By the way, fetal tissue from elective abortions has been used to develop treatments for arthritis, cystic fibrosis and hemophilia. It has been used to develop vaccines to prevent polio, rubella, measles, chicken pox and hepatitis A. Fetal cell lines were used during the research and development of many common medications, including acetaminophen, albuterol, aspirin, ibuprofen, Pepto-Bismol, Lipitor, Ex-Lax, Benadryl and Zoloft.)
As soon as I saw the doctored videos, released in 2015 to whip up hysteria among antiabortion lawmakers and voters, I knew this was just another piece of dishonest theater from people who will stop at nothing to deprive women of the right to control their own bodies.
And whip up hysteria they did: At least 20 states and four congressional committees launched investigations, none of which found anything close to wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood, because, not to put too fine a point on it, there was no "there" there.
These extremists wrongly believed they had staked out some sort of moral high ground that allowed them to break the law in pursuit of healthcare professionals who provide legitimate and legal health services to a huge swath of Americans.
Then they tried to hide behind the 1st Amendment, claiming to be legitimate journalists engaged in a legitimate undercover investigation.
Now they have suffered a well-deserved string of legal humiliations.
A Houston grand jury, convened nearly seven years ago to investigate Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast after the "sting" operation videos were posted, found no wrongdoing by the healthcare provider and instead handed down criminal indictments against Daleiden and Merritt.
Oh, snap!
Those charges were eventually dropped, sadly, but Daleiden et al have a heap of other legal woes.
In 2016, Planned Parenthood filed a federal civil lawsuit in San Francisco, alleging that Daleiden and Merritt, along with others, including Operation Rescue's Troy Newman, who were part of their scheme, had engaged in an illegal conspiracy to block access to abortion. A jury sided with Planned Parenthood, finding that Daleiden and Merritt had broken the law and would have to pay Planned Parenthood damages in excess of $2.4 million.
The defendants appealed, and last week, they lost again when a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of the jury's damages against the pair.
"From the beginning of their scheme," wrote Judge Ronald M. Gould, "Appellants engaged in illegal conduct — including forging signatures, creating and procuring fake driver's licenses, and breaching contracts — that the jury found so objectionable as to award Planned Parenthood punitive damages."
No journalist, said the court, gets a free pass to break the law in pursuit of a story.
"The First Amendment is not a license to trespass, to steal, or to intrude by electronic means into the precincts of another's home or office," the court said.
Unfortunately for the antiabortion activists, while the federal civil case was wending its way through the system, the state of California charged the pair with more than a dozen criminal counts. In 2017, then-California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra alleged that the antiabortion duo had committed felony violations of a state law that prohibits recording conversations without consent. They have pleaded not guilty.
On Monday, a spokesperson for current state Attorney General Rob Bonta told me the case is still pending. On Sept. 26, a court denied a defense motion to have the case dismissed. The next hearing is scheduled for Nov. 3, at which time a trial date may be assigned.
Tragically, the U.S. Supreme Court has done legally what this pair tried to do illicitly. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June, the court, which defended the right to end a pregnancy for nearly half a century, has now allowed states to severely curtail or completely outlaw abortion. About half have done so.
California is one of the many blue states that will never capitulate to the attempt to turn back the clock on the progress and bodily autonomy of American women.
Next month, California voters are expected to approve a ballot measure, Proposition 1, amending the state Constitution to explicitly protect abortion rights. Some critics have complained that the proposed amendment is flawed because it does not contain language about viability or put any limits on when an abortion can occur. But such language is unnecessary. California law already allows abortion until the point that a physician determines viability, or beyond that if the procedure is necessary to protect "the life or health of the woman."
To underline the state's commitment to women, on Tuesday the California Department of Justice announced the launch of a Reproductive Rights Task Force, a coalition of district attorneys and city attorneys across the state. The task force will work on supporting, expanding and protecting reproductive rights in our state.
I doubt antiabortion activists will go away anytime soon. But maybe the legal woes of Daleiden et al will have a chilling effect on their misguided crusades.
