Court blocks anti-abortion group's videos: What is Center for Medical Progress?

The temporary restraining order will remain in place until the Senate hearing on whether to bar federal aid for Planned Parenthood.

|
Laura Buckman /Star-Telegram via AP
Mary Daley (c.) speaks with fellow Catholic protesters during an anti-abortion rally outside of Planned Parenthood in Fort Worth, Texas, on July 28, 2015.

The Los Angeles Superior Court has issued a temporary restraining order preventing an anti-abortion group from releasing any video from a sting investigation of the company StemExpress, which provides fetal tissues for research in conjunction with Planned Parenthood.

Videos from a similar undercover investigation conducted by same organization has sparked recent controversy around Planned Parenthood's tissue donation practices. The US Senate is expected to vote on a Republican effort to bar federal aid for Planned Parenthood in the aftermath of the videos' release.

The order issued Tuesday prohibits the Center for Medical Progress from releasing any video of surreptitiously recorded conversations with three high-ranking StemExpress officials. The temporary restraining order will remain in place until a hearing on Aug. 19.

David Daleiden, founder of Center for Medical Progress, said in a statement on Wednesday that StemExpress was using "meritless litigation" to cover up an "illegal baby parts trade."

"The Center for Medical Progress follows all applicable laws in the course of our investigative journalism work," said Mr. Daleiden who was previously the director of research for the anti-abortion group Live Action.

On its website, the center describes itself as "a group of citizen journalists dedicated to monitoring and reporting on medical ethics and advances. We are concerned about contemporary bioethical issues that impact human dignity, and we oppose any interventions, procedures, and experiments that exploit the unequal legal status of any class of human beings."

The Center for Medical Progress appears to be a relatively new organization. The first post on the group's blog is dated July 6 of this year and its Twitter account, @CtrMedProgress, only goes back to May 30.

The group has released three surreptitiously-recorded videos since July 14. One of the videos shows Planned Parenthood's senior director of medical services discussing procedures for providing fetal tissue to researchers.

The videos have riled anti-abortion activists. Currently Planned Parenthood’s website is not available, following two cyberattacks in the past week. A note on their website reads: “Our site is not available due to an attack by extremists.”

Following the court order, Planned Parenthood’s spokesman also said StemExpress is "grateful its rights have been vindicated in a court of law."

Placerville-based StemExpress provides human tissue, blood and other specimens to researchers. Planned Parenthood is one of the company's providers of fetal tissue.

Planned Parenthood says the only money it receives are small reimbursements for processing and transportation costs.

Donation of fetal tissue for medical research purchases is legal. However, purchase of tissue, solicitation or acceptance of tissue as directed donation for use in transplantation, and solicitation or acceptance of tissue from fetuses gestated for research purposes is unlawful if the transfer affects interstate commerce, according to federal law. A person who violates the laws will be fined or imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both.

This report includes material from the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Court blocks anti-abortion group's videos: What is Center for Medical Progress?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2015/0730/Court-blocks-anti-abortion-group-s-videos-What-is-Center-for-Medical-Progress
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe