In 2015, anti-abortion activist David Daleiden’s Center for Medical Progress created the fictitious biomedical company Biomax Procurement Services and secretly recorded Planned Parenthood officials while posing as a buyer of fetal tissue. CMP released edited footage suggesting that Planned Parenthood employees were haggling over the sale of “baby parts.” Full, unedited recordings instead showed an executive saying that clinics sought only reimbursement for costs associated with tissue donation, not profit; Planned Parenthood’s attorney said Biomax had offered a sham contract proposing $1,600 for liver and thymus tissue. The New England Journal of Medicine characterized the videos as a campaign of misinformation.
The recordings triggered five congressional investigations, proposed federal defunding legislation, and funding or contract cuts in several states, although the Senate rejected a defunding bill on August 3, 2015. A Harris County, Texas, grand jury cleared Planned Parenthood and indicted Daleiden and Sandra Merritt over allegedly fabricated identification and attempted organ-purchase violations; those charges were later dismissed, including after questions about the grand jury’s authority and indictment technicalities. California prosecutors charged Daleiden and Merritt with 15 felony counts of invasion of privacy in March 2017. Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation also pursued civil litigation alleging fraud, unlawful recording, trespass, conspiracy, and racketeering; courts rejected the defendants’ initial First Amendment effort to end Planned Parenthood’s case, and a 2019 court upheld searches of Daleiden’s devices while rejecting a claimed journalist shield-law protection.
