ASHEVILLE, N.C. (BP) — A 26-year-old activist with a video camera has moved to the forefront of cultural challengers to the nation’s largest abortion provider.
David Daleiden and his group Center for Medical Progress are in the process of releasing a much-publicized series of videos he says show Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) senior executives involved in selling baby body parts.
The first video, released July 14, showed PPFA Senior Director of Medical Services Dr. Deborah Nucatola admitting to using partial-birth abortions to get intact body parts to sell. Daleiden released a second video July 21 showing another PPFA senior executive — Dr. Mary Gatter, president of PPFA’s Medical Directors’ Council — haggling over the price of body parts and offering to use abortion methods that will not destroy the parts — what she called “less crunchy techniques.”
Questions of federal law surround both the sale of fetal tissue as well as abortions involving fetal tissue collection.
How did Daleiden get these videos? “We conducted a 30-month-long investigative journalism project,” he told WORLD News Service.
Daleiden said he spent months networking and building relationships, noting, “You can’t just walk in off the street and get meetings and lunch dates with these people.”
Daleiden, the only full-time employee of the Center for Medical Progress, said he attended six different abortion industry trade shows, including a March 2015 event hosted by the National Abortion Federation, an association of abortion providers.
He also printed business cards and letterhead and created a fictitious business designed to convince PPFA officials he was in the business of fetal tissue procurement.
“We established a front company, including a website,” Daleiden said. “We modeled ourselves after existing companies in the industry that were already harvesting fetal body parts.” One of those companies, California-based StemExpress, issued a statement “regarding recent media reports,” saying in part, “StemExpress prides itself on complying with all laws.”
The 30-month undercover effort cost about $125,000, Daleiden said.
Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, said funding for Daleiden’s video investigation came from Operation Rescue and a small number of “pro-life benefactors.”
Newman is one of three members of the board of the Center for Medical Progress. The other two are Daleiden and pro-life activist Albin Rhomberg, who is no stranger to undercover photo projects. In 1982, Rhomberg gained entry to the Los Angeles County coroner’s office and took photos of aborted babies seized in a raid on an abortion facility. The photos were some of the first to expose the practice of late-term abortions.
If the two videos already released don’t do the job, Daleiden told WORLD, “We have thousands of hours of video and audio. This is not all we have. This is just the beginning.”
