News
Featured Image
David Daleiden flanked by Peter Breen (R) and Brent Ferreira (L) outside San Francisco Court house, Sept. 2019.Jim Hale / LifeSiteNews

SAN FRANCISCO, California, September 12, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — The longtime medical director of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles admitted there was no ban at her abortion facility on changing the abortion procedure in order to harvest better baby body parts.

Semi-retired, Doe 10 — who can’t be named by order of the court to protect her identity — took the stand Wednesday and Thursday at the criminal preliminary hearing of David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt taking place in San Francisco.

The Center for Medical Progress investigative journalists are charged with 15 felony counts of illegal taping of confidential conversations in connection with undercover videos they released in 2015 that revealed Planned Parenthood trafficking in baby body parts. They face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Doe 10, medical director at Planned Parenthood Los Angeles until 2013 and then medical director at Planned Parenthood Pasadena, was caught in an undercover video saying she’d ask her abortionist to consider using a “less crunchy” technique in order to obtain better body parts.

She also said she needed enough “compensation” to make the business deal with Biomax, the fictitious fetal procurement company Daleiden and Merritt set up for the sting operation, joking she “wants a Lamborghini.”

READ: New video: Planned Parenthood official haggles over baby body part prices, jokes ‘I want a Lamborghini

Doe 10 admitted under questioning Wednesday by Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society and lawyer for Daleiden, that the Planned Parenthood affiliates she worked in had no rule against changing the abortion procedure “technique” in order to obtain better baby body parts.

Federal consent rules stipulate a doctor cannot change the method of a medical procedure without a patient’s consent.

Doe 10 testified that Planned Parenthood abortionists “would never change the method” but admitted Planned Parenthood began making the distinction between “technique” and “method” after the CMP undercover videos were released.

“We had to grapple with fallout from the videos,” Doe 10 told the court. “We had to be more specific.”

“There is no distinction between ‘method’ and ‘technique’ in the law, and there is no distinction between method and technique in medical ethics,” Breen told LifeSiteNews later.

“And so this artificial distinction that Planned Parenthood abortion doctors created so that they could get better fetal tissue is absolutely illegal and unethical and our witnesses, when we get to put on our case for the defense, they’re going to talk about that,” he said.

The defense lawyers are arguing that 633.5 of California's penal code allows covert taping of confidential conversations when those doing so have a reasonable belief they are investigating violent crimes.  

Lawyers for Daleiden and Merritt are also arguing that as well as violating federal consent rules, changing the abortion procedure “technique” constitutes battery against women.

The change of  “procedure where you make money off of the fetal tissue sale, where you’re changing the abortion technique without telling that patient” could be to a woman’s “permanent detriment,” he told LifeSiteNews.

“We’re getting testimony that switching the fetus position from the normal position of vertex to breech increases dilation so you can get better fetal tissue, well, what does increasing dilation also do, it causes harm or can cause harm to a woman’s cervix which then can cause her to be unable to carry a pregnancy down the road,” Breen added.

Doe 10 also testified Wednesday that Planned Parenthood Los Angeles (PPLA) does abortions up to 24 weeks, and described that this would either be the D&E method, which involves “disarticulation…dismemberment” of the baby in utero, or the induction method, which involves inducing labor.

Breen questioned her Thursday about the use of misoprostol to induce labor and whether it could increase the risk of out-of-center live births in multiple-day abortions.

Doe 10 said she couldn’t remember protocol used at PPLA for “bigger cases.”

Horatio Mihet of Liberty Counsel, who is defending Merritt, asked Doe 10 if she expected that the information she shared with Daleiden and Merritt, who were posing as buyers from fictitious fetal tissue procurement company Biomax, at the luncheon meeting they had would be shared.

Doe 10 said she expected the information “to be confined to people with a legitimate interest…in legitimate research” and not “with Chuck Grassley,” a “Senate Republican.”

Senate Judiciary Committee chair Grassley, R-IA, announced in December 2016 he was referring several Planned Parenthood affiliates and companies involved in fetal tissue transfers, as well as the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, to the FBI and the Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution.

“So your concern is with who they shared it with?” Mihet asked.

“My concern is that the were liars and I was taken in by them,” Doe 10 said.

Mihet also introduced several clips from the CMP undercover video showing wait staff often coming to the table where Doe 10 and Doe 11 were speaking to Daleiden and Merritt, and asked if it was possible they could overhear the conversation.

The California law is clear that conversations that can reasonably expected to be overheard cannot be considered confidential.

Doe 10 said she at one point said, “we need to be discreet” but in the clips Mihet showed, she took no steps to stop the conversation or lower her voice while wait staff were pouring water or replenishing drinks.

Doe 10 said she assumed the wait staff had no interest in the conversation, and that what was being discussed at those times “was not sensitive,” but Mihet pointed out the point was that the wait staff could overhear what was being said, regardless of whether they were interested or what was being discussed.

Breen told LifeSiteNews that Doe 10 was not subpoenaed to appear and that they “had reason to believe” Planned Parenthood was footing the bill for her stay in San Francisco to testify at the hearing.