Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Center for Medical Progress, along with named individuals within CMP, over CMP’s release of misleading and distorted undercover videos.
Read the formal complaint here. Planned Parenthood is seeking relief because CMP created an extensive conspiracy to defame Planned Parenthood and prevent them from providing legal and safe health care to women. In doing so, they violated RICO rules, secretly taped private conversations, fraudulently misrepresented their identities, along with other unlawful behavior in several states.
From Planned Parenthood’s press release:
“The people behind this fraud lied and broke the law in order to spread malicious lies about Planned Parenthood,” said Dawn Laguens, Executive Vice President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “This lawsuit exposes the elaborate, illegal conspiracy designed to block women’s access to safe and legal abortion, and we filed the case to hold them accountable.”
….
“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,” said Kathy Kneer, CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. “We’re going on the offensive to expose this fraud for what it is and hold the people behind it accountable – in order to prevent further harassment of our patients and staff and protect access to the preventive and reproductive health care Planned Parenthood provides to millions of people each year.”
The response from the Center for Medical Progress is predictably obnoxious:
Planned Parenthood is under investigation by the United States Congress and multiple law enforcement agencies, while their business is drying up and the public is turning against their barbaric abortion for baby parts trade. Now they are filing a frivolous lawsuit in retaliation for CMP’s First Amendment investigative journalism that has done nothing more than tell the truth about Planned Parenthood’s lawless operations. This last-ditch move of desperation is going to expose all of the sordid dealings of the California Planned Parenthood affiliates to the light of the legal system and the public will see them for the corrupt abortion and baby body parts profiteers that they really are.
This is great news. Let’s hope these assholes have to pay big money and Planned Parenthood is able to reclaim their good name.