On Friday, YouTube pulled down a video from the Center for Medical Progress that exposed in graphic detail just what Planned Parenthood does with the babies it kills in the womb. The video shows deputy director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Health Freedom Project Talcott Camp explaining, “I’m like — Oh my God! I get it! When the skull is broken, that’s really sharp! I get it! I understand why people are talking about getting that skull out, that’s calvarium.” Planned Parenthood Federation of America Dr. Uta Tandy states, “An eyeball just fell down into my lap, and that is gross!” Dr. Ann Schutt-Aine of Planned Parenthood explained how she would avoid charges of partial-birth abortion in violation of federal law: “I might ask for a second set of forceps to hold the body at the cervix and pull off a leg or two, so it’s not [partial-birth abortion].”
The video is as shocking as it is gruesome.
Naturally, that means that the Left sees the CMP, which revealed the video, as the bad guys. California has already selectively prosecuted CMP, as I wrote months ago:
California is a two-party consent state when it comes to taping private conversations. But those conversations have to be private. Fourteen of the 15 charges filed came under California Penal Code Section 632(a), which states in relevant part, “Every person who, intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication, by means of any electronic amplifying or recording device, eavesdrops upon or records the confidential communication … shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), or imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one year, or in the state prison, or by both that fine and imprisonment.” Note the language: confidential. These were not confidential communications. First off, conversations in a public restaurant are clearly not confidential. And the Ninth Circuit found in 2002 that tapes made in private areas between a company and undercover journalists who are “strangers” to that company are not illegal — they ruled that a very similar undercover investigation by ABC News against Medical Laboratory Management Consultants for Primetime Live was just fine. …
Now the legal Left is going even further, attempting to block the new video from public view through misuse of the law. California District Judge William Orrick had issued an injunction against the release of the video; now he wants to hold CMP in contempt of court. But the state of California has already made the tapes public by filing a criminal proceeding publicly based on the tape, as CMP’s lawyers explained to National Review.
Here’s the truth: the Left will stand up for journalists being body-slammed by Republican candidates in Montana, but it will cheer as journalists who expose Planned Parenthood are shut down. They claim to be in favor of First Amendment freedoms, but that support dies the first time anybody reports on the actual abortion advocates who receive taxpayer funding.