Washington D.C., Apr 4, 2018 / 11:14 am
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from a pro-life group seeking to release undercover footage detailing alleged misconduct in the abortion industry.
The cases – David Daleidan et al. v. National Abortion Federation et al. and Troy Newman v. National Abortion Federation et al. – were appealed this past August after a lower court sided with the National Abortion Federation in the lawsuits.
The Supreme Court's decision not to take up the case means that the lower court decisions will stand, and additional footage may not be released.
David Daleidan is the project lead at the Center for Medical Progress, a pro-life group that released a series of undercover videos in 2015 allegedly demonstrating the illegal sales of body parts from aborted babies.
The released videos appeared to show various Planned Parenthood and StemExpress executives discussing, often callously, their practices for obtaining and selling fetal body parts. Daleidan alleged that Planned Parenthood was profiting from these sales, which is illegal under federal law.
Other videos appeared to show abortion doctors describing how they would perform illegal late-term abortions in violation of state laws, utilizing a series of loopholes, and one cracked a joke on camera about how her "biceps appreciate" when a drug kills the fetus before it is delivered.
At stake in the current lawsuits are several other unreleased videos that were shot at the 2014 and 2015 annual meetings of the National Abortion Federation. Daleidan attended the conference and filmed portions of it while using an alias.
The National Abortion Federation – a nonprofit that represents abortion clinics – filed suit in 2015 to prevent the videos from being released, claiming they were illegally recorded. Daleidan has defended himself against these allegations by saying he is a citizen journalist, and the videos were protected as part of his work as a reporter.
On Twitter, Daleidan said that the Department of Justice's ongoing investigation of Planned Parenthood means that the unreleased footage will "only grow more and more relevant" until it will be eventually released.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">As <a href="https://twitter.com/TheJusticeDept?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TheJusticeDept</a> continues to investigate <a href="https://twitter.com/PPact?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PPact</a> for the criminal sale of baby body parts, the undercover footage that Judge Orrick continues to suppress will only grow more and more relevant until it can finally be revealed to the public.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PPSellsBabyParts?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PPSellsBabyParts</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ShutThemDown?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ShutThemDown</a> <a href="https://t.co/NtWNfld1zb">https://t.co/NtWNfld1zb</a></p>— David Daleiden (@daviddaleiden) <a href="https://twitter.com/daviddaleiden/status/980971235268952064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 3, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The Center for Medical Progress claims to have many more hours of unreleased video of abortion providers.
