A top Planned Parenthood official isn’t ruling out legal action against the activists behind a string of undercover videos showing the group’s involvement in supplying aborted fetal tissue.
Planned Parenthood Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens told The Hill she thinks the videos are illegal and said her organization is “considering everything” in going after the people behind it, in an interview published Friday morning.
“I absolutely do believe that they have violated laws in terms of how they secured these videos,” she said in an interview at the group’s main office in Washington. “But the fraud is also in how they have presented them and in the editing.”
Laguens was referring to a group calling itself the Center for Medical Progress, led by Catholic abortion opponent David Daleiden. Daleiden used to work with Live Action, another group that also has produced Planned Parenthood videos.
Daleiden worked for several years to obtain hours of footage. He and another actor posed as buyers for a fake human tissue company to discuss the practice of fetal tissue donation, and compensation for it, with Planned Parenthood officials. Daleiden also interviewed a whistleblower at one of the biomedical companies that contracts with abortion clinics.
Planned Parenthood has apologized for the “tone” taken by some officials who appeared to be haggling over the price of organs. The group has mainly expressed outrage at the videos, saying Daleiden intentionally misrepresented its work. It is illegal to profit from fetal tissue, but Planned Parenthood says it has received compensation only for the overhead costs.
Laguens didn’t give any specifics about whether Planned Parenthood is considering suing the Center for Medical Progress. But she did say her group is considering all sorts of options, including legal ones.
“We are considering everything,” she said. “I’m not a lawyer — but everything is on the table when you look at these videos and the fraud and the conspiracy behind it.”
Besides releasing seven videos, most of which are about 11-12 minutes long, Daleiden also has released additional hours of unedited footage. But Laguens focused on the edited videos, telling The Hill that he “splice[d] it together in all sorts of crazy ways in order to tell a political story.”
Planned Parenthood has said clinics in only three states provide aborted fetal tissue to biomedical companies, but won’t name which states.
