Planned Parenthood Files Federal Lawsuit Against Smear Campaign

Friday, January 15, 2016

GoLocalPDX News Team

Planned Parenthood of the Columbia Willamette filed a federal lawsuit today against the people behind what Planned Parenthood called a “widely discredited smear campaign.”

The civil lawsuit, filed in San Francisco, outlines how the defendants - including David Daleiden, Troy Newman, Albin Rhomberg, Sandra Merritt, Gerardo Lopez, Phillip Cronin, the Center for Medical Progress and BioMax - engaged in a complex criminal enterprise to defraud Planned Parenthood and prevent the healthcare organization from providing preventive and reproductive health services to millions of women and men.

The lawsuit charges that CMP, its leaders and its co-conspirators engaged in illegal conduct that includes violating the Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO Act) and engaging in wire fraud, mail fraud, invasion of privacy, illegal secret recording and trespassing.

"These anti-abortion activists broke multiple laws to spread lies about Planned Parenthood, and the lawsuit filed today will expose this fraud for what it is and hold accountable the people behind it," said Stacy M. Cross, President & CEO of Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette. "It's really unbelievable that these lies are being used to try to block thousands of people in Oregon and Southwest Washington from getting high-quality reproductive health care at Planned Parenthood. We won't let that happen."

Planned Parenthood alleges that over the course of nearly three years, Daleiden, Newman and other principals used aliases, obtained fake government IDs and formed a fake tissue procurement company, Biomax, in an effort to worm their way into private medical conferences and health centers. Planned Parenthood also claims the group illegally taped private professional conversations of doctors and other medical providers and spliced together shards of long conversations to create short videos in order to spread false claims that Planned Parenthood "sells" or profits from women's decisions to donate fetal tissue for medical research.

"CMP's reckless and dangerous actions have created a poisonous environment that fuels political attacks on access to reproductive health care and feeds threats against our health centers," Cross said. "We're going on the offensive to prevent further harassment of our patients and staff and protect access to the preventive and reproductive health care Planned Parenthood provides to people across Oregon and Southwest Washington each year."

Planned Parenthood claims it has never sold fetal tissue or facilitated fetal tissue donation in order to make a profit.

“A small number of Planned Parenthood affiliates have offered patients the ability to donate fetal tissue for critical medical research that has led to important medical breakthroughs such as vaccines, and treatment for diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease,” the organization said in a statement.

“Like all of Planned Parenthood's services, this work operates under the highest legal, medical and ethical standards, with full consent of patients. To date, officials in 10 states have concluded investigations into claims that Planned Parenthood profited from fetal tissue donation, and each one has cleared Planned Parenthood of wrongdoing. Another eight states have declined to even investigate, citing a lack of any evidence to suggest wrongdoing.”

Planned Parenthood is asking in the lawsuit for restitution of actual damages, compensatory and punitive damages and triple damages for violations under the civil RICO claim, as well as attorneys' fees. The lawsuit was brought by Planned Parenthood Federation of America and all seven Planned Parenthood affiliates in California.