Operation Rescue recently uncovered documents and emails through a public records request showing collusion between Planned Parenthood and the California Attorney General’s office. On March 8, 2016, Jill Habig, Special Counsel to then Attorney General Kamala Harris was sent a draft of proposed amendments to California’s existing recording laws. The proposed changes were sent by none other than Beth Parker, Chief Legal Counsel to Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California.
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.
If you’re the average person then you probably haven’t looked too deep into the allegations swirling around the mainstream media’s reporting on the charges against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. Daleiden and Meritt are two citizen journalists with the Center for Medical Progress who are responsible for the infamous expose videos showcasing time and time again the callous attitude with which Planned Parenthood views the sanctity and dignity of human life.
CMP first received national attention when they released videos of Planned Parenthood employees harvesting and selling fetal limbs and organs. Back in April, California Family Council reported on the latest sting video released by CMP at that time in which the former medical director for Planned Parenthood Action of Arizona famously joked about “needing to hit the gym” in order to have the strength required to perform a D&E (dilation and evacuation) abortion. A dilation and evacuation abortion is literally the ripping apart of a baby in the mother’s womb.
Planned Parenthood has attempted to push back against the videos calling them” heavily edited.” Daleiden and other CMP journalists have also faced felony charges prior to the (known) recently-discovered collaboration between the California Attorney General’s office and Planned Parenthood. In January of 2016, a Houston grand jury indited Daleiden and Merritt for alleged criminal conduct related to the unauthorized recording of Planned Parenthood and its officials. Those charges were later dropped.
The day after the suggested amendments were sent, Habig and Parker met to go over them. Operation Rescue reported:
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.
On March 28, 2017, David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt were charged with 15 felony counts by the new state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who received multiple campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood. According to the Washington Times, “[t]he pro-life activists are charged with criminal conspiracy to invade privacy and 14 counts of filming people without their permission in Los Angeles, San Francisco and El Dorado counties.”
