The jury said the pro-life activists who exposed the organization’s sale of fetal parts could not use journalism as a defense.
Pro-life advocates decried an award of more than $2.2 million to Planned Parenthood in a suit involving undercover investigations that provided evidence the country’s leading abortion provider traded in the sale of baby body parts.
A federal jury in San Francisco issued the penalties last Friday against the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) and, among others, two investigators who secretly recorded videos of Planned Parenthood executives discussing their sale of fetal parts, as well as their willingness to manipulate the abortion procedure to preserve organs for sale and use. David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt also clandestinely recorded conversations with officials of fetal tissue procurement businesses that worked with Planned Parenthood.
The jury agreed with Planned Parenthood that the defendants were guilty of fraud, trespassing, illegal recording, racketeering and breach of contract, according to The San Francisco Examiner. It awarded Planned Parenthood $870,000 in punitive damages, about $470,000 in compensatory damages and—under a federal anti-racketeering law—triple compensatory damages of more than $1.4 million, The Examiner reported. The total was $2.28 million.
“Regardless of what any court decides, the videos of Planned Parenthood speak for themselves,” said Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics andn Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), in written comments for Baptist Press. “They reveal an organization whose profit structure is built on violence against women and their unborn children.
“Whatever questions some may have about the legality of the recordings, we should not forget what the recordings revealed: The cruelty, dishonesty and lawlessness of Planned ...
from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/37kGs1f
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