Pair Whose Videos Exposed Planned Parenthood Get Plea Deal
28th January 2025
Prosecutors in California have reached a plea deal to end a nearly decade-long court fight with an anti-abortion activist and journalist who together exposed Planned Parenthood for allegedly trafficking fetal body parts.
David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, and journalist Sandra Merritt, said Monday the criminal cases against them have ended, with the California Attorney General’s office agreeing to a plea deal that includes no prison time or fines, Live Action reported Monday.
Videos taken by Daleiden and Merritt exposed the scandal after they went undercover at various locations, including the National Abortion Federation’s 2014 and 2015 convention and trade shows. The videos, some of which were also taken from inside Planned Parenthood offices, showed executives discussing price negotiations and sales of human body parts.
In a properly ordered society, such people would be celebrated, not prosecuted. But we don’t have that.
After some videos were released, former Vice President Kamala Harris, then California’s Democrat attorney general, met with Planned Parenthood officials in 2016, Live Action reported, after which she ordered criminal investigations into Merritt and Daleiden, including a search of Daleiden’s home.
Harris’ successor as attorney general, Democrat Xavier Becerra, who would become Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden, charged them both with violating California’s recording law. The state had never criminally prosecuted undercover journalists for recordings made in the public interest, according to Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal group that represented Merritt.
Merritt and Daleiden were each charged with 14 felony counts of unlawfully recording a conversation and one felony count of criminal conspiracy.
No good deed goes unpunished–by Democrats.