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CMP project lead David Daleiden

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SAN FRANCISCO, September 5, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — A celebrity abortionist who boasted in court she “starred” in a documentary on late-term abortion testified at the criminal preliminary hearing of two pro-life undercover investigators Wednesday that born-alive babies are “one of the worst nightmares” for an abortion center.

Doe 3 is one of 14 individuals the state of California claims were criminally victimized by being secretly taped by David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress during their undercover investigation into the illegal selling of baby body parts.

Daleiden and Merritt are charged with 14 felony counts of illegal recordings under Penal Code section 632, and a 15th count of conspiracy to violate section 632, in connection with undercover videos CMP released in 2015.

If convicted, they could be sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Their legal team is arguing that the law does not apply when there is a reasonable expectation that the conversation will be overheard, and that undercover taping is permitted when those doing so have a reasonable belief they are collecting evidence of a violent crime.

Presiding judge Christopher Hite of the San Francisco Superior Court ruled that the names of abortion providers be sealed during the prosecution.

Doe 3’s celebrity status made it clear that “she didn’t really care about her conversation with [Daleiden] and she didn’t care about whether it was confidential or not, and I think that came through during her testimony,” defense lawyer Brentford Ferreira told LifeSiteNews.

Doe 3, who sported a tiny silver coat-hanger dangling from a chain around her neck, volunteered during Ferreira’s cross-examination that a documentary “starring me” had been shown on PBS.

“I was in no way secretive about being an abortion provider,” she told the court. “I loved my work.”

That work was specializing in late-term abortions at Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque, New Mexico, one of two abortion centers owned by Curtis and Glenna Boyd.

Now retired, Doe 3 told the court that “one of the worst nightmares” for the abortion facility was “if a living fetus is delivered out of center,” that is, in a hotel.

A late-term abortion in which labor is induced by injections of Misoprostol can take up to four days — for example, if a woman has never given birth before, Doe 3 testified.

So mothers coming to Southwestern Women’s Options would stay in a hotel after “being treated during the day,” she said.

Doe 3 used an injection of digoxin, a drug intended to overwhelm the unborn baby’s heart, for babies over 18 weeks’ gestation to kill them before inducing labor, thus virtually eliminating the possibility of live births. “Our failure rate is about two percent,” she said.

When Ferreira asked Doe 3 what dose of Misoprostol she used to induce labor, Deputy Attorney General Johnette Jauron objected that the information wasn’t relevant.

“It has to do with the pain and suffering of the woman,” Ferreira retorted. “It has to do if the baby is born alive if the didge [the digoxin injection] doesn’t work.”

Doe 3 testified she used a dose of 400 milligrams of Misoprostol every three to four hours.

The question is significant because the defense plans to introduce expert evidence that the dosage of Misoprostol “abortion doctors give to initiate labor actually throws the uterus into severe contractions and causes severe pain and nausea,” Ferreira told LifeSiteNews.

“Because the contractions are so severe the abortion doctor really has very little control over whether there’s going to be a partial birth abortion, or even a live birth,” he said.

This is “an absolute defense” for Daleiden and Merritt because if they are “investigating violent felonies it doesn’t matter if the conversation is confidential or not, it is allowed.”

In his Human Capital Project, Daleiden “outlined all of the violent felonies that he was investigating, including infanticide, partial-birth abortions, changes in procedure by abortion doctors that harm the woman that are used to get more intact fetal organs or even whole fetal cadavers,” said Ferreira.

“I was trying to develop with Doe 3 that if she didn’t use digoxin, and she did use a large dose of Misoprostol, then the chances of a baby being born alive go up exponentially.”

Doe 3 testified that she met Daleiden at the 2014 National Abortion Federation trade show and convention, where he was posing as Robert Sarkis of BioMax Procurement Services, a fetal tissue–harvesting company.

She is recorded in the undercover video demonstrating a set of forceps “used for very small parts” of the unborn baby that don’t require “much of a crush” and discussing fetal tissue procurement insofar as “didged” babies delivered after days lying dead in the womb weren’t suitable.

The “entire meeting” of the NAF conference is “very secretive” and “very confidential,” Doe 3 told the court.

Ferreira introduced evidence from the congressional hearing into the selling of baby body parts that Southwestern Women’s Options provided fetal tissues to the University of New Mexico but withdrew it after Doe 3 said she didn’t know who testified at the hearing.

Doe 3 “did testify that Southwestern does provide fetal tissue to the University of New Mexico and that that tissue comes from fetuses who are not given digoxin” and would be “no older than 17 weeks, six days gestation,” Ferreira told LifeSiteNews.

Doe 3 also “admitted to knowing about babies born alive, saying it’s the worst nightmare for an abortion doctor,” he said.

Defense lawyer Nic Cocis questioned Doe 3 at length using the video clip as to whether or not she could agree that the conversation in the exhibit hall could be overheard, but Doe 3 hedged, saying she doubted it, she couldn’t say, there was a “huge amount of background noise,” and that she couldn’t judge how far people were from her in the video.

The hearing continues Thursday.