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Thursday, September 14, 2017

Collusion? Planned Parenthood Drafted “Video Tape Law” Aimed at Punishing Future Pro-Lifer Whistleblowers

The charges against the pro-life journalists were bumped up to felony counts, no doubt at Planned Parenthood’s request


By Cheryl Sullenger
Operation Rescue

[Note: This article has been edited as of June 4, 2017, to reflect corrections and additional information. Operation Rescue endeavors to be as accurate as possible, thus we regret anything in the previous version of this article that may have been misleading or inaccurate. -C.S.]

Sacramento, CA: A public records request made by Operation Rescue has yielded e-mails and other documents that show a close working relationship between Planned Parenthood and the California Attorney General’s office, especially when it comes to countering pro-life efforts.

Planned Parenthood attorneys often sought meetings and conference calls with members of the Attorney General’s Office to discuss a number of issues, including the “Video Tape Law,” HB 1671, which was used to criminally charge David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP).
“Planned Parenthood essentially wrote the language that criminalized Daleiden and Merritt’s recordings more than a year after they were made,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman, who also served as a founding member of the CMP. To clarify, if the recordings had been made after January 1, 2017, they could have been charged under Planned Parenthood’s new, tougher law.
“Planned Parenthood wanted to punish the CMP for exposing their appalling and illegal sale of aborted baby tissue and organs, so they concocted a law that made [future] recordings illegal. [Even so,] David and Sandra’s criminal charges are the result of the State of California aiding and abetting Planned Parenthood’s vendetta against those who blew the whistle on their ghoulish conduct.”
In fact, a draft of amendments to an existing recording law was submitted on March 8, 2016, by Beth Parker, Chief Legal Counsel to Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California to Jill Habig, who then served as Special Counsel to Attorney General Kamala Harris.

Planned Parenthood’s suggested amendments made it a crime to secretly record health care providers and mandated that anyone who “aids, agrees with, employs, or conspires with any person or persons to unlawfully do, permit, or cause to be done” surreptitious recordings would face fines of $2,500 per occurrence and imprisonment not exceeding one year, if convicted.

The following day, March 9, 2016, Planned Parenthood’s Parker visited Habig’s office to discuss the draft amendments, including any potential obstacles to the law.

On March 16, just five days later, Parker submitted a rewrite of the bill that showed slight edits in the original draft. For example, “agrees with” was stricken from the language that discussed criminal culpability for those who conspired in making secret recordings.


While the final text of the legislation was fine-tuned over the following weeks, it included all the points that Planned Parenthood had requested. The newly edited law was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on September 30, 2016, after last-minute language was inserted to specifically exclude news organizations, which had complained about the bill. The law went into effect on January 1, 2017.


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