Planned Parenthood awarded $2.3 million for secret videos

[ZiprHead]

A federal jury found Friday that an anti-abortion activist illegally secretly recorded workers at Planned Parenthood clinics and is liable for violating federal and state laws. The jury ordered him, the Center for Medical Progress and other parties to pay nearly $2.3 million in damages.

After a six-week civil trial, the San Francisco jury found David Daleiden trespassed on private property and committed other crimes in recording the 2015 videos. He and the Center for Medical Progress and various employees were ordered to pay varying amounts.

Daleiden and a co-defendant, Sandra Merritt, are set to go on trial starting Dec. 6 on 14 counts each of invasion of privacy. They have pleaded not guilty and argue they are undercover journalists shielded from prosecution.

Planned Parenthood sued the activists as part of what the group called “a multi-year illegal effort to manufacture a malicious campaign.”

“The jury recognized today that those behind the campaign broke the law in order to advance their goals of banning safe, legal abortion in this country, and to prevent Planned Parenthood from serving the patients who depend on us,” the organization’s acting president and CEO, Alexis McGill Johnson, said in a statement.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Planned Parenthood Wins $2 Million Dollar Lawsuit

https://thehill.com/policy/healthca...ed-2-million-in-lawsuit-against-anti-abortion

...
A federal jury in San Francisco found that the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress and its president, David Daleiden, broke multiple state and federal laws when they secretly recorded and released videos of Planned Parenthood employees. The jury awarded Planned Parenthood $2 million in damages, finding that Daleiden and his organization engaged in fraud, trespassing and illegal secret recording.
“David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress intentionally waged a multi-year illegal effort to manufacture a malicious campaign against Planned Parenthood,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, the acting president and CEO of Planned Parenthood.


“The jury recognized today that those behind the campaign broke the law in order to advance their goals of banning safe, legal abortion in this country, and to prevent Planned Parenthood from serving the patients who depend on us.”
...

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I am so sad that none of these bastards will serve time for any of this. This is almost as good as Stone and Gates getting sentenced.

 

[repoman]

A big ask here, but taking awau fraud and misleading editing, what if this was a slaughterhouse or dairy farm and an animal rights group had a civil judgment for illegal secret recording?

Again, fraud unrelated to getting secret recording I think should be punished. But if you have to lie to get the recording that is fine.

If the recordings are fraudulently edited, then punish that.

 

[ZiprHead]

Duplicate threads merged.

 

[Lion IRC]

A great and proud display of civil disobedience.
That guy is a hero.
This will simply encourage MORE truth telling about the sickening secrets of the abortion industry.

 

[Harry Bosch]

A great and proud display of civil disobedience.
That guy is a hero.
This will simply encourage MORE truth telling about the sickening secrets of the abortion industry.

<sigh> This is the one political issue that there really is no compromise. Perhaps in the future, if a better drug was developed that could be dispensed safely with better distributions to patients, and if the right joined the left with greater concerns for privacy, a compromise could be reached.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A great and proud display of civil disobedience.
That guy is a hero.
This will simply encourage MORE truth telling about the sickening secrets of the abortion industry.

Except what he "exposed" was his own lies. I wouldn't mind if he was telling the truth but he wasn't.

 

[Lion IRC]

A great and proud display of civil disobedience.
That guy is a hero.
This will simply encourage MORE truth telling about the sickening secrets of the abortion industry.

<sigh> This is the one political issue that there really is no compromise. Perhaps in the future, if a better drug was developed that could be dispensed safely with better distributions to patients, and if the right joined the left with greater concerns for privacy, a compromise could be reached.

I think the prolifers did propose a compromise a while back.
Legal abortions for pregnant rape victims and cases where the pregnancy posed a simultaneous and unavoidable threat to the life of both the mother AND the baby. (Ectopic pregnancies.)

This compromise was rejected because of the minuscule number of abortions that would permit.

 

[laughing dog]

A great and proud display of civil disobedience.
That guy is a hero.
This will simply encourage MORE truth telling about the sickening secrets of the abortion industry.

These people edited videos to promote a lie. That is not telling a truth. In fact, that breaks the 9th Commandment.

So, celebrating a liar is really unchristian.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A great and proud display of civil disobedience.
That guy is a hero.
This will simply encourage MORE truth telling about the sickening secrets of the abortion industry.

<sigh> This is the one political issue that there really is no compromise. Perhaps in the future, if a better drug was developed that could be dispensed safely with better distributions to patients, and if the right joined the left with greater concerns for privacy, a compromise could be reached.

I think the prolifers did propose a compromise a while back.
Legal abortions for pregnant rape victims and cases where the pregnancy posed a simultaneous and unavoidable threat to the life of both the mother AND the baby. (Ectopic pregnancies.)

This compromise was rejected because of the minuscule number of abortions that would permit.

The rape exception is what most Christians want--it's about punishing non-reproductive sex, it's not about the fetus. If she didn't consent, no need to punish her.

As for the risk--if the woman does so does the fetus. The only risks that aren't faced by both are non-fatal ones.

Consider a niece-in-law of ours. She was facing possible blindness, treatment involved a pregnancy class X drug. The options:

1) She goes blind.

2) She gives birth to a likely seriously harmed baby.

3) Abortion.

You want to see her blind.

 

[Gun Nut]

A great and proud display of civil disobedience.
That guy is a hero.
This will simply encourage MORE truth telling about the sickening secrets of the abortion industry.

<sigh> This is the one political issue that there really is no compromise. Perhaps in the future, if a better drug was developed that could be dispensed safely with better distributions to patients, and if the right joined the left with greater concerns for privacy, a compromise could be reached.

I think the prolifers did propose a compromise a while back.
Legal abortions for pregnant rape victims and cases where the pregnancy posed a simultaneous and unavoidable threat to the life of both the mother AND the baby. (Ectopic pregnancies.)

This compromise was rejected because of the minuscule number of abortions that would permit.

What does "a threat to the life" mean? Let's start with what "a life" means.. then we can move on to what valid "threats" would be to that... THEN we can talk about who decides that whatever it means, it applies in a particular case? Any doctor? Your particular favorite doctor? Your priest? Who?
Whatever is decided that represents this thing you are calling "the life" of someone. .would that also apply to all other laws that use the word "life", or is this "a life" different than the "life" mention in laws about murder... how about those about theft, or fraud?

 

[Lion IRC]

I agree, let's start with a clear definition of human life ie. when it begins.
Some people think it starts at some magical point near the end of the birth canal.

And I'm pretty sure we could work out a way to define the term "threat to life" in such a way that it entails striving to save life instead of looking for the flimsiest pretexts to exterminate life.

 

[Gun Nut]

I agree, let's start with a clear definition of human life ie. when it begins.
Some people think it starts at some magical point near the end of the birth canal.

And I'm pretty sure we could work out a way to define the term "threat to life" in such a way that it entails striving to save life instead of looking for the flimsiest pretexts to exterminate life.

Also, let's be careful when we talk about what a "life" is. You jumped right to the "when it begins" without saying what "it" even is. A baby that is born, and then put into a dumpster, is not being denied life... they are being denied help living, but that is not the same thing, is it?

 

[Lion IRC]

On some worldviews there's no difference between the life of an animal and the life of a human.
Others apply arbitrary (racist) definitions to what qualifies as "human".
Yeah. We should be careful.

 

[Gun Nut]

Some people think it starts at some magical point near the end of the birth canal.

The end of the birth canal is the vagina... some people may wish to call it "magical", but it is a pretty clear indicator.. not hard to miss it.
Far from magical is a "point extending out of the vagina".
What is "magical" to me is the idea that there is a "point" in time... between conception and birth.. where one can say a clump of cells with the potential for life, IS life.
That's some "magical thinking" right there.

Since we can't really use "magic" as an objective tool, what shall be used? It seems obvious that birth might be that clear-cut point in time.

But what is much more interesting for me to talk about is what drives the thoughts around that conversation.. what "life" really is... when it needs to be protected and when we are hearing just a bunch of bullshit.

 

[Lion IRC]

I think conception is a much more scientific marker of the start of life than a ~ 150mm long birth canal.

You mentioned the difference between a crime of omission and commission- leaving a baby in a dumpster. But in the dumpster scenario there is a deliberate intent to act in a way which, on any test of reasonableness, would be understood as causing the death of the baby.

 

[Elixir]

I think conception is a much more scientific marker of the start of life than a ~ 150mm long birth canal.

You mentioned the difference between a crime of omission and commission- leaving a baby in a dumpster. But in the dumpster scenario there is a deliberate intent to act in a way which, on any test of reasonableness, would be understood as causing the death of the baby.

I think prokaryotes were the start of life.

 

[ZiprHead]

I think conception is a much more scientific marker of the start of life than a ~ 150mm long birth canal.

You mentioned the difference between a crime of omission and commission- leaving a baby in a dumpster. But in the dumpster scenario there is a deliberate intent to act in a way which, on any test of reasonableness, would be understood as causing the death of the baby.

Why is that the start of life. The sperm is alive, the egg is alive. Seems to me it's all just a continuation of life.

 

[PyramidHead]

What secretive practices was this group trying to expose? People know what an abortion is.

It doesn't matter when life begins, so stop feeding the Christian framing of the issue. I am a fully grown, fully alive human being with a rich emotional and cognitive life. No ambiguity about whether I am alive exists. Yet, if I am attached to your body by a tube that siphons your nutrients and sustenance from you, and I require that tube to stay alive, you are not morally obliged to keep the tube connected for one second longer than is acceptable to you. Even if you were the one who originally created the situation regarding said tube. Even if there is only a few months left until I no longer need the tube. I am a parasite on your body and its resources, and so you can cease providing them at any point.

The argument over when life begins is a red herring designed to obscure the actual issue, which is that nobody is entitled to occupy or colonize the physical body of anyone without their continued and instantly revocable consent.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I think conception is a much more scientific marker of the start of life than a ~ 150mm long birth canal.

Pro-lifers agree... conception is the start of life... and birth is the end of it. At least as far as they are willing to vote and protest that is.