University to release documents detailing experiments on aborted babies after 6-year legal battle

By Samantha Kamman, Christian Post Reporter Wednesday, December 14, 2022

David Daleiden, a defendant in an indictment stemming from a Planned Parenthood video he helped produce, speaks to the media after appearing in court at the Harris County Courthouse on February 4, 2016, in Houston, Texas. Daleiden is facing an indictment on a misdemeanor count of purchasing human organs, and along with defendant Sandra Merritt, is charged with tampering with a governmental record. | Eric Kayne/Getty Images

A university that reportedly acts as a repository for human fetal tissue has agreed to provide pro-life activist David Daleiden with 12 years' worth of records detailing its practices after a six-year-long legal battle.

Per the settlement, the University of Washington will produce full records of its use and distribution of aborted fetuses and their organs from 2010 to the present. In addition, the university will pay Daleiden's counsel $30,000 in attorney's fees.

The settlement was secured by the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit law firm representing Daleiden, known for his undercover work with the Center for Medical Progress.

Planned Parenthood and university representatives have also agreed to dismiss a lawsuit they filed in 2016 to prevent the release of the records. Daleiden is dismissing his cross-claim against the university for allegedly violating the Public Records Act.

In 2016, the pro-life activist filed a request under the Public Records Act for information about the university's government-sponsored fetal experimentation, including its relationship with Planned Parenthood. The request also sought documentation regarding how projects are approved and the U.S. National Institutes of Health's level of involvement with UW's experiments.

Associates of the university and Planned Parenthood sued to prevent the release of the public records, which will now be made available.

"There's no 'abortion exception' to our nation's public records laws, and the people have a right to know how their government is run," Peter Breen, vice president and senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, stated in a press release provided to The Christian Post.

"We are pleased at the successful resolution of this lawsuit by settlement. That settlement secured attorney's fees from the UW and nearly everything that David Daleiden was seeking from the UW: thousands of pages of new documents on the buying and selling of aborted fetal tissue trafficking, including job titles and all non-personal information."

"These are public records of a taxpayer-funded program, and this settlement secures Mr. Daleiden's rights to the documents he needs as a citizen journalist," he continued.

The Center for Medical Progress, an organization headed by Daleiden, also celebrated the decision in a Tuesday press release, with the pro-life activist promising that the group will continue "advocat[ing] for more just and humane abortion and research policies."

"Public entities' good faith compliance with public records laws is crucial to promoting public trust, holding bad actors accountable under the law, and safeguarding democratic values," Daleiden stated.

"State actors' transparency and accountability under freedom of information laws is even more important in the realm of government-sponsored experiments on aborted human fetuses, where laws against infanticide and organ trafficking, the systemic exploitation of the vulnerable, and the irreversible life-or-death abortion decisions of new families are at stake."

As The Christian Post reported, a three-judge panel for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in October that Daleiden and his fellow pro-life activists must pay a $2.4 million judgment to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

The judgment was related to a series of videos Daleiden and CMP released in 2015 that appeared to show Planned Parenthood employees agreeing to the sale of aborted baby body parts. The corporation has repeatedly claimed that the videos are false and deceptively edited, while Daleiden asserts that the full-length videos show otherwise.

At the center of the recent litigation was whether the activists violated various laws, including conspiracy, breach of contracts, fraud, fraudulent and unlawful business practices, trespass, RICO, and various federal and state wiretapping laws.

Circuit Judge Ronald M. Gould, who authored the panel opinion, rejected the pro-life activists' arguments that they were acting as journalists and that their actions were protected under the First Amendment.

Regarding the University of Washington, a 2016 U.S. House of Representatives Energy & Commerce Committee report stated that the university received fetal tissue from "over a dozen clinics" in the preceding five years and charged recipients "a flat fee of $200 regardless of the nature of the tissue researched."

According to a 2020 report titled "Human Fetal Tissue from Elective Abortions in Research and Medicine: Science, Ethics, and the Law," the Human Fetal Tissue Repository at the Birth Defects Research Laboratory at The University of Washington is the largest provider of human fetal tissue and is funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follower her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman