Planned Parenthood Cleared by Grand Jury; Center for Medical Progress Members Indicted Instead

[Content Note: War on agency. Video may autoplay at link.]

Careful what you wish for—especially when your accusations of lawbreaking are projection:

A grand jury convened to investigate whether a Houston Planned Parenthood clinic had sold the organs of aborted fetuses on Monday cleared the clinic and instead indicted the undercover videographers behind the allegations, surprising the officials who called for the probe and delighting supporters of the women's health organization.

The Harris County grand jury indicted David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, both of California, on charges of tampering with a governmental record, a second-degree felony with a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison. It also charged Daleiden, the leader of the videographers, with the same misdemeanor he had alleged – the purchase or sale of human organs, presumably because he had offered to buy in an attempt to provoke Planned Parenthood employees into saying they would sell.

Whoooooooooops!

The record-tampering charges were brought because Daleiden and Merritt made counterfeit California driver's licenses with the intent to defraud Planned Parenthood.

As you probably recall, members of the absurdly named Center for Medical Progress posed as biotech reps, and then recorded various employees of Planned Parenthood without their knowledge discussing how fetuses are aborted in order to preserve their organs for medical research and the costs of getting that tissue to researchers, then heavily edited the videos and publicly released them, prompting more than a dozen states to launch investigations into Planned Parenthood, all of which found that Planned Parenthood was doing nothing illegal nor outside normal medical practices.

This particular investigation has lasted more than two months, and not only did the grand jury find that Planned Parenthood had not broken the law, but that CMP had.

"As I stated at the outset of this investigation, we must go where the evidence leads us," said [Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson], a Republican. "All the evidence uncovered in the course of this investigation was presented to the grand jury. I respect their decision on this difficult case."

That doesn't mean that Texas' state investigation is complete, however.

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said on Monday that the inspector general of the state's Health and Human Services Commission and the Texas attorney general's office have been investigating Planned Parenthood's actions.

"Nothing about today's announcement in Harris County impacts the state's ongoing investigation," Mr. Abbott said in a statement. "The State of Texas will continue to protect life, and I will continue to support legislation prohibiting the sale or transfer of fetal tissue."

The state attorney general, Ken Paxton, said in a statement: "The fact remains that the videos exposed the horrific nature of abortion and the shameful disregard for human life of the abortion industry. The state's investigation of Planned Parenthood is ongoing."

Of course it is.

Well, if we're lucky, maybe that investigation will somehow culminate in indictments for Abbott and his cronies, too! Karma apparently gets her healthcare at Planned Parenthood.