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David DaleidenAmerican Life League

LOS ANGELES, January 11, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – The biomedical company accused of contracting with Planned Parenthood to harvest and sell aborted baby body parts has dropped its lawsuit against the pro-life undercover investigators at the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), and are walking away with nothing.

CMP's exposure of Planned Parenthood's baby body parts business via its undercover journalism showed that the company, StemExpress, was intimately involved with collecting aborted babies. In September, the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives voted to hold StemExpress in contempt of Congress for stonewalling its investigation into the baby body parts scandal.

In July 2015, StemExpress requested a judge issue a gag order preventing CMP from releasing video footage of its CEO Cate Dyer at a business dinner. In the video, Dyer discussed obtaining fully intact baby bodies from abortions, leading to questions about how such abortions were committed. Dyer also discussed seeking “another 50 livers a week” from a “volume institution” like Planned Parenthood, and asserted that supplying fetal tissue should be “profitable” for abortion facilities.

The gag order was denied and CMP released the video.

Then, StemExpress tried to take legal action against CMP by seeking a settlement. But less than a year later, its lawyers at McDermott, Will & Emery stopped representing the company.

The man behind the videos exposing the baby body parts cabal said StemExpress's withdrawal of its suit is a “surrender” for the baby parts vendor and a “victory for free speech and citizen journalism.”

“StemExpress was the first of Planned Parenthood’s accomplices to file a retaliatory lawsuit against citizen journalists and the first to seek an unconstitutional prior restraint on our First Amendment rights to speak and publish,” said CMP Project Lead David Daleiden. “Now, the video is out for all the world to see, StemExpress faces criminal referral in multiple jurisdictions, and they are walking away from their own lawsuit empty-handed.”

“This victory for free speech and citizen journalism was made possible by our masterful and indefatigable legal representation in this case by Chuck LiMandri at the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, and Katie Short at Life Legal Defense Foundation,” said Daleiden. “StemExpress’ surrender sends an unmistakable message to Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Federation, and all their political cronies who would dare to attack the First Amendment to cover up their crimes.”

The Select Panel reported that StemExpress destroyed documents shortly after filing their lawsuit, in violation of document retention rules and Congressional subpoenas. The Select Panel made multiple criminal and regulatory referrals of StemExpress. One referral was to the Department of Justice over the company's destruction of documents. Another was to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concerning the possible violation of federal patient privacy regulations. Other state and national referrals of StemExpress were for the company possibly profiting from selling aborted babies. 

Rep. Joe Pitts, R-PA, and Select Panel Chairman Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-TN, called StemExpress the “Amazon.com of baby body parts,” because of its drop-down menu that allowed researchers to order baby body parts obtained from abortions. 

Congressional research and the company's own admissions to CMP showed StemExpress was profiting from aborted baby body parts. The company reported millions of dollars in revenue in the years after its founding.

Nevertheless, in a May 2016 interview with the Washington Post, Dyer insisted, “We lose money doing this.”