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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PLANNED PARENTHOOD BABY PARTS VENDOR STEMEXPRESS BACKS OFF OF LAWSUIT AGAINST VIDEOMAKERS
Wholesaler of Aborted Fetal Organs Sued The Center for Medical Progress In Attempt to Suppress Videotape of Criminal Profiteering

Contact: Kate Bryan, kbryan@crcpublicrelations.com, 703.683.5004

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 11–StemExpress, the for-profit company that was one of Planned Parenthood’s biggest contractors to harvest and sell aborted baby body parts, is dropping its lawsuit against The Center for Medical Progress and walking away with nothing.

CMP’s undercover videos exposed StemExpress in July 2015 as a major illegal vendor of aborted fetal organs and tissue from some of the biggest Planned Parenthood affiliates in the country. StemExpress advertised to abortion clinics that supplying fetal tissue would be “financially profitable” and this advertisement was endorsed by Dr. Dorothy Furgerson, Chief Medical Officer of Planned Parenthood Mar Monte where StemExpress harvested and purchased body parts. StemExpress’ longtime Medical Director, Dr. Ronald Berman, was also an abortion doctor at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte.

StemExpress, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America have been referred by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Select Investigative Panel to the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. The sale or purchase of human fetal tissue is a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to $500,000 (42 U.S.C. 289g-2).

StemExpress sued CMP in late July 2015, seeking an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech with a preliminary injunction gag order to prevent the release of undercover video of a business dinner with its Founder and CEO, Cate Dyer. In the video, Dyer made several shocking admissions about StemExpress obtaining fully intact fetuses from abortion cases, seeking “another 50 livers a week” from a “volume institution” like Planned Parenthood, and asserting that supplying fetal tissue should be “profitable” for abortion clinics.

Dyer’s recorded statements corroborated the whistleblower interview testimony of Holly O’Donnell, who worked as a procurement technician at StemExpress in Planned Parenthood clinics and observed profit motive between StemExpress and Planned Parenthood and the harvesting of intact fetuses.

StemExpress’ request for a gag order was denied in August 2015, and CMP released the footage. Less than a month after the release of the video, StemExpress counsel at McDermott, Will & Emery first approached CMP seeking a settlement in the case, and less than a year later, McDermott, Will & Emery withdrew from representation of StemExpress. The House Select Investigative Panel has since reported that StemExpress was engaged in widespread document destruction shortly after they filed their lawsuit, in violation of document retention rules and Congressional subpoenas.

“StemExpress was the first of Planned Parenthood’s accomplices to file a retaliatory lawsuit against citizen journalists and the first to seek an unconstitutional prior restraint on our First Amendment rights to speak and publish,” notes CMP Project Lead David Daleiden. “Now, the video is out for all the world to see, StemExpress faces criminal referral in multiple jurisdictions, and they are walking away from their own lawsuit empty-handed.”

“This victory for free speech and citizen journalism was made possible by our masterful and indefatigable legal representation in this case by Chuck LiMandri at the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, and Katie Short at Life Legal Defense Foundation. StemExpress’ surrender sends an unmistakable message to Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Federation, and all their political cronies who would dare to attack the First Amendment to cover up their crimes.”

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Find out more about CMP’s investigative journalism work at cmp.org

After over a year of comprehensive, nationwide investigative work, the Final Report of the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Select Investigative Panel definitively shows that Planned Parenthood and associates in their abortion empire are guilty of breaking numerous state and federal laws in their criminal harvesting and sale of aborted baby body parts. The report documents admissions under oath by top-level Planned Parenthood leadership that they change their abortion methods to get higher quality baby parts, use fraudulent and invalid consent forms with vulnerable pregnant women, set their prices for fetal organs and tissue without regard to actual cost, and “It doesn’t bother me” that companies like StemExpress make money off of body parts harvested at Planned Parenthood. Emails obtained by the Panel even show the National Abortion Federation sought to obtain kickback payments for each successful body parts harvesting at a NAF-member clinic. Law enforcement at all levels must now prosecute Planned Parenthood’s criminal abortion business to the fullest extent of the law, and the American taxpayer should no longer be forced to subsidize the barbarism of the abortion industry.

CMP’s undercover videos of Planned Parenthood’s senior level leadership clearly show the nation’s biggest abortion provider deeply engaged in the harvesting and sale of aborted baby body parts. As the TX Office of the Inspector General’s letter makes clear, the findings to date of the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Select Investigative Panel, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the state of Texas’ own investigation confirm what is shown in the videos and document legal and medical violations at Planned Parenthood even more widespread than initially recognized.

In Texas, Planned Parenthood commits almost twice as many abortions each year than the number of Medicaid patients it sees there. Americans overwhelmingly oppose using their taxpayer dollars to subsidize the abortion industry, which is led by Planned Parenthood, so redirecting taxpayer funds away from big abortion’s criminal enterprise and into real, full-spectrum, mainstream healthcare is just common sense and good policy.

The Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter today to the FBI and the Department of Justice formally referring for criminal prosecution four of the biggest Planned Parenthood affiliates, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and three of their closest business partners in the harvesting and sale of aborted baby body parts. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s report confirms that Planned Parenthood and companies like StemExpress partnered in a years-long criminal conspiracy to sell the body parts of aborted children for profit. When Planned Parenthood national became aware that their affiliates were operating their baby body part programs in violation of Planned Parenthood’s own guidelines, Planned Parenthood covered up for the affiliates and deleted the guidelines. The Committee’s report shows Planned Parenthood and their baby body parts business partners are totally unaccountable and must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and Planned Parenthood’s barbaric abortion empire must no longer be subsidized by taxpayer funds.

Today, the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Select Investigative Panel announced that they have referred Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast for criminal prosecution to the Texas Attorney General on account of its illegal sale of baby body parts. The Select Panel is the only official, comprehensive, nationwide investigation of Planned Parenthood’s harvesting and sale of aborted fetal organs, and their findings confirm the criminal activity at Planned Parenthood that CMP’s videos documented and show that the wrongdoing goes even deeper than anyone first suspected. The Panel has also criminally referred Planned Parenthood’s closest business partners in the sale of aborted baby parts to various state and local law enforcement. Law enforcement and elected representatives at all levels must now act quickly to bring Planned Parenthood to justice under the law and prevent any more taxpayer subsidies from flowing to Planned Parenthood’s barbaric criminal enterprise.

CMP’s videos on the entities referred by the Panel for criminal prosecution can be found at these links:

Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast
StemExpress
DaVinci Biosciences/DV Biologics
Advanced Bioscience Resources

In the past year, CMP’s videos exposed Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry’s barbaric, taxpayer-sponsored criminal scheme to harvest and sell tiny baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains for profit. Yesterday, the American people voted for change agents to respect and protect even the smallest and most forgotten among us, including our unborn brothers and sisters. We can all now unite around commonsense, consensus pro-life policies and leave behind the failed pro-abortion extremism of the past.

Planned Parenthood’s proxy group, the National Abortion Federation, continued their unprecedented and extreme attack on the First Amendment today as they argued to keep the undercover videotapes of NAF’s annual meetings secret. Planned Parenthood and NAF are trying to suppress the freedom of the citizen press and the public’s right to know, in order to keep clear evidence of their coordinated criminal sale of aborted baby body parts from being revealed. The House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Select Investigative Panel recently revealed that NAF and StemExpress negotiated an agreement to market StemExpress fetal tissue sales as a “value added service” to abortion clinics–and now StemExpress has gone into criminal contempt of Congress rather than produce its financial records in response to subpoenas. The justice system must cut the Gordian knot of the unconstitutional prior restraint blocking the release of the videos, and we will not stop until our First Amendment rights, and those of all Americans, are vindicated.

The Orange County, California District Attorney’s Office announced today they are prosecuting a criminal lawsuit against Planned Parenthood of Orange & San Bernardino Counties’ longtime baby body parts business partners, sister companies DaVinci Biosciences and DV Biologics.

For eight years, Planned Parenthood supplied aborted baby hearts, lungs, brains, and intestines to DV Biologics, which DV Biologics then resold for profit. In exchange for merely providing access to aborted baby body parts, Planned Parenthood received kickback contributions from DaVinci Biosciences over the course of their eight-year contract.

The wheels of justice are beginning to turn against Planned Parenthood and their corrupt business partners in the illicit trade in aborted baby body parts. Planned Parenthood is not above the law, and law enforcement and elected representatives everywhere must now hold Planned Parenthood accountable for their barbaric profiteering off of pregnant women and the body parts of their aborted children.

The House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Select Investigative Panel has already discovered probable cause that Planned Parenthood and StemExpress profited off of baby body parts together, used fraudulent and invalid consent forms to pressure patients to agree to body parts harvesting, and violated the HIPAA privacy rights of tens of thousands of pregnant women. Planned Parenthood’s political cronies on the Panel minority, whom Planned Parenthood funds with tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, made clear today how terrified they and their abortion industry masters are of the full details being revealed about Planned Parenthood’s criminal partnership with StemExpress. They walked out of the hearing today because they can’t handle the truth about Planned Parenthood and StemExpress’ for-profit business partnership in baby body parts. Finding StemExpress in contempt of Congress is just the first criminal charge that the full details about the illicit body parts trade at Planned Parenthood will reveal.

Planned Parenthood and their allies have yet again stormed into federal court, this time demanding the suppression of public records about Planned Parenthood’s supply of aborted baby parts to the taxpayer-sponsored, NIH-funded fetal harvesting service at the University of Washington.

Last October, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards hailed the partnership between Planned Parenthood Greater Washington & North Idaho and the University of Washington as the exemplary model of their new program for profit-neutral baby parts harvesting. Numerous headlines proclaimed Planned Parenthood’s new “policy change” purporting to stop receiving payment for fetal body parts, after CMP’s videos had revealed Planned Parenthood’s senior leadership callously negotiating the harvest and sale of tiny baby hearts, lungs, and brains for profit.