2015 Smear Campaign Against Planned Parenthood

2015 Smear Campaign

Against Planned Parenthood

A coordinated effort by anti-abortion extremists failed to block patients’

access to care at Planned Parenthood health centers.

Beginning in July 2015, an anti-abortion group called the Center for Medical Progress (CMP)

leveled a series of elaborate and false claims against Planned Parenthood. Using multiple

manipulated and illegally recorded videos, these extremists made what are now widely

discredited and debunked accusations about practices to facilitate the donation of fetal

tissue for use in medical research at a small number of Planned Parenthood health centers.

The campaign was yet another example of people opposed to safe and legal abortion

seeking to prevent patients from accessing care at Planned Parenthood health centers, as

well as pass legislation that would signicantly curtail people’s access to reproductive and

sexual health care.

Planned Parenthood has never and would never sell fetal tissue. These anti-abortion

operatives engaged in a deliberate fraud to deceive the public, and it has been shown over

and over again that their claims are false.

Facts about Tissue Donation and Planned Parenthood

• Fetal tissue donation for medical research has led to lifesaving scientic breakthroughs, and this research

has long had bipartisan support.

• Congress passed the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993 with overwhelming support

from the House (290-130) and Senate (93-4). Academic institutions and teaching hospitals across the

country have received federal or private grants to support research using donated fetal tissue on a wide

range of conditions including diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, spinal cord injuries, hemophilia, leukemia,

sickle cell anemia, ALS, and others.

• No Planned Parenthood afliate is currently facilitating patients’ decisions to donate fetal tissue for use in

medical research. In the past, afliates have done this because it can improve public health and because

their patients have requested it.

• Planned Parenthood has had clear guidance in place for more than a decade to ensure that this work, like

every other service Planned Parenthood provides, follows high ethical and medical standards and complies

with all laws. Planned Parenthood’s guidance in this area goes above and beyond the legal requirements.

• In October 2015, Planned Parenthood changed our policy on fetal tissue donation to further counter

CMP’s discredited smear campaign. The health centers that participate in fetal tissue donation now accept

no reimbursement for expenses related to tissue donation, even though accepting such reimbursements is

legal, and instead cover all expenses related to donation. Planned Parenthood does not and has never had

any nancial interest in fetal tissue donation.

Planned Parenthood®, PPFA®, and the logomark are registered service marks of PPFA. Updated October 2020 1

Outcome of Investigations into Planned Parenthood

Following the release of CMP’s heavily and misleadingly edited videos, investigations in at least 13 states

concluded that Planned Parenthood engaged in no wrongdoing.

Eight other states declined to investigate at all, citing lack of evidence. What’s more, none of the multiple, heavily

partisan congressional investigations — including a select panel created for that sole purpose — concluded that

Planned Parenthood violated any laws.

• House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), whose

committee conducted one of these investigations, stated that he uncovered no wrongdoing after

examining tens of thousands of pages of material provided by Planned Parenthood to his committee.

• Sen. Patty Murray introduced a resolution in the U.S. Senate calling to disband another Republican-led

panel created to investigate Planned Parenthood, the Select Investigative Panel of the Committee on

Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives, as it had “found no wrongdoing on the part of

Planned Parenthood.”

• Months later, ranking Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight and

Government Reform Committee sent a letter to their respective committee leaders in support of Planned

Parenthood, requesting that they suspend investigation for lack of merit.

Federal Rulings Centered on the False Claims

Courts in several states also found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood, instead

concluding that the campaign was a fraud maliciously crafted by the CMP operatives.

• In Texas, a U.S. district court judge wrote in his order that the Inspector General of the Texas Health

and Human Services Commission didn’t have “even a scintilla of evidence” to warrant the termination

of Planned Parenthood health centers from the Medicaid program because he was relying on

“unauthenticated” video from CMP. He also characterized their video evidence as “suspect.”

• A U.S. district court judge in Louisiana blocked the governor’s attempt to defund Planned Parenthood

health centers in the state during the smear campaign, writing “the uncontradicted evidence in the record

at this time is that PPGC [Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast] does not perform abortions in Louisiana, is

not involved in the sale of fetal tissue and none of the conduct in question occurred at the PPGC’s two

Louisiana facilities.”

• A U.S. district court judge in California prohibited one of the operatives, David Daleiden, and a

number of other anti-abortion extremists from releasing recordings and materials they illegally

obtained, writing that the “defendants engaged in repeated instances of fraud, including the

manufacture of fake documents, the creation and registration with the state of California of a fake

company, and repeated false statements.”

• The instigators of the manipulated videos were charged with felonies in both California and Texas.

In January 2016, a Texas grand jury issued both felony and misdemeanor criminal charges for two of the

people behind the videos, David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt.

The pair are currently awaiting trial on multiple felony charges in California for actions leading up to

the smear campaign.

Planned Parenthood®, PPFA®, and the logomark are registered service marks of PPFA. Updated October 2020 2

Planned Parenthood Fights Back

Throughout CMP’s malicious campaign, Planned Parenthood health centers continued to provide

high-quality, compassionate health care and education. Planned Parenthood health centers received

immense support from hundreds of grassroots organizations following the attacks, along with 2.4 million

signatures from people showing their support for the organization. An NBC/Wall Street Journal survey indicated

that support for Planned Parenthood, which was already high, actually increased at the time, and over 4 million

new supporters joined Planned Parenthood after the attacks began in 2015. Today, Planned Parenthood has

16 million supporters.

In January 2016, Planned Parenthood sued the Center for Medical Progress for breaking multiple state

and federal laws. That case went to trial and in November 2019, a jury empaneled by a federal district court in

San Francisco found that the Center for Medical Progress, David Daleiden, and others who manufactured the

discredited campaign against Planned Parenthood all broke multiple state and federal laws in their efforts to bar

access to reproductive health care. The jury ruled in Planned Parenthood’s favor on each of its claims, including

nding that the defendants violated the Racketeer Inuenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and engaged

in fraud, trespass, breach of contract, and illegal secret recording. The jury awarded Planned Parenthood both

compensatory and punitive damages, totaling more than $2 million, for the injuries that Daleiden and his co-

conspirators caused.

The trial court made clear that the only people who engaged in wrongdoing were those behind the

smear campaign:

● “Simply claiming the mantel [sic] of a journalist does not give someone a license to trespass, illegally

record, or otherwise commit violations of generally applicable laws. The ‘evidence’ defendants actually

gathered and then published as a result of the conduct the jury found was illegal did not itself show any

illegal conduct by Planned Parenthood or plaintiff afliates.”

● “[T]here is no evidence that any Federal government entity has concluded that any Planned Parenthood

afliate illegally proted from the sale of fetal tissue or altered procedures in violation of federal laws.”

● “[T]here was no evidence submitted at summary judgment or in pre-trial motions to show that any

Planned Parenthood afliate violated any law.”

• Read about Planned Parenthood services and the communities we serve

• Read about the essential role Planned Parenthood plays in providing care across the country

• Read about Planned Parenthood’s services in its annual report and its audited nancial statement and IRS

990 forms

• Read about the history of political attacks on Planned Parenthood, including decades of doctored videos,

failed entrapments, and false accusations

Additional Resources by Date

• 1988 Commission Report on fetal tissue donation (12/14/1988)

• Letter from Janet Heinrich, director, health care - public health issues, at the Government Accountability Ofce

to the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education on the use of fetal tissue in

research (10/4/2000)

Planned Parenthood®, PPFA®, and the logomark are registered service marks of PPFA. Updated October 2020 3

• Letter from Roger Evans, Planned Parenthood’s senior counsel, to Congress regarding history of harassment and

attacks by anti-abortion opponents (7/20/2015)

• Letter from Roger Evans, Planned Parenthood’s Senior Counsel, to Congress regarding the second heavily edited

and misleading video released by anti-abortion opponents (7/21/2015)

• Letter from Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, to Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes

of Health (NIH), urging an assessment of fetal tissue research to be led by medical experts (7/27/2015)

• Frequently Asked Questions on Fetal Tissue Research from the Congressional Research Service (7/31/2015)

• Associated Press article about current studies using fetal tissue for scientic research (8/11/2015)

• Letter from Jim Esquea, assistant secretary for legislation at the Department of Health and Human Services,

to Senators Joni Ernst and Roy Blunt explaining current legislation and federal funding for fetal tissue research

(8/14/2015)

• Report from forensic experts nding that the CMP videos were heavily edited and do not reect actual events, which

Planned Parenthood submitted to congressional leadership (8/25/2015)

• Letter from Cecile Richards to congressional leadership, in which she provides extensive information and context

about fetal tissue donation (8/27/2015)

• Short fact sheet on deceptive edits in the videos, including examples of splicing statements to fabricate quotes

(August 2015)

• Democrats request Congressional committees suspend their “one-sided” investigations into Planned Parenthood

(9/3/2015)

• Commentary about research using fetal tissue by Alta Charo, J.D., a leading bioethicist, published in the New

England Journal of Medicine (9/3/2015)

• Report prepared in 2015 by the Congressional Budget Ofce (CBO) estimating that as many as 650,000 people

could face reduced access to preventive health care if Congress were to succeed in blocking Medicaid patients from

seeking care at Planned Parenthood health centers (9/16/2015)

• Letter from Keith Hall, director of CBO, to Representative Kevin McCarthy, Majority Leader of the U.S. House of

Representatives, projecting the net cost to taxpayers of barring Planned Parenthood from Medicaid would be $130

million over 10 years because of an increase in unintended pregnancies without the high-quality contraceptive care

Planned Parenthood provides (9/22/2015)

• Cecile Richards’ written testimony before the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee (9/29/2015)

• Letter from Cecile Richards to Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announcing the

handful of Planned Parenthood health centers involved in fetal tissue research will no longer accept reimbursement

in order to take away any basis for attacking Planned Parenthood in this area (10/13/2015)

• Open letter signed by 41 leading scientists who conduct research using fetal tissue offering support for the patients,

physicians, and researchers who contribute to this vital work (10/14/2015)

• Commentary by Planned Parenthood’s Chief Medical Ofcer in the New England Journal of Medicine, arguing that

the smear campaign is a political effort to ban abortion in the U.S. (10/14/2015)

• Letter from Cecile Richards to House Speaker Paul Ryan asking for justication of further congressional investigations

(10/30/2015)

• Open letter signed by over 50 of the nation’s leading research institutions expressing grave concerns over attempts

to restrict fetal tissue research (11/3/2015)

• Read about the vast majority of Americans who support Planned Parenthood (December 2015)

• U.S. District Court Order Resolving Unfair Competition Claim and Entering Judgment (April 2020)

• U.S. District Court Order on Post-Trial Motions (August 2020)

Planned Parenthood®, PPFA®, and the logomark are registered service marks of PPFA. Updated October 2020 4