In his recent article featured on LifeNews.com, Tom Brejcha, an attorney for the Thomas More Society, outlined LiveAction’s ongoing battle with Planned Parenthood related to the latest series of LiveAction films which reveal Planned Parenthood’s cover-up of child sex trafficking.
A key part of Planned Parenthood’s counterattack against Lila Rose’s youth-led group, Live Action, and its staggered release early this year of damning videos depicting Planned Parenthood managers, “health professionals,” and other employees willing to welcome, advise and aid & abet purported “sex traffickers” and “pimps” was to get YouTube to suppress the videos on the basis that they violated YouTube’s published “privacy guidelines.” This post recalls our long and ultimately successful effort to help Live Action defeat Planned Parenthood’s counterattack.
Brejcha continues by outlining the numerous videos from Live Action’s Trafficking series which survived Planned Parenthood’s desperate attempts of censorship via YouTube. Among other reasons, all the Live Action videos remain on YouTube today because of their newsworthiness and the role they played in sparking Congressional debate on the topic…
But Thomas More Society sent a third letter to YouTube, dated May 20, 2011, arguing even more strenuously that the Live Action videos fit squarely within the two exceptions carved out by YouTube’s own published “privacy guidelines,” that is, “newsworthiness” and “public interest.” The Society’s letter, signed by both TMS attorneys Tom Brejcha and Peter Breen, argued that the targeted “video … has been thrust into the storm center of America’s public policy debate over Planned Parenthood’s willingness to do business with, and thereby aid and abet, sex traffickers and pimps of underage girls, many of whom … recently arrived in this country, imported here for lewd and immoral purposes in what could only be described as a form of sex slavery – an obscenely cruel bondage.”
Further, the letter argued:
- That all the videos’ contents had been publicized far and wide by every major media outlet in the country;
- That the videos have altered America’s policy debates over defunding Planned Parenthood;
- That that defunding debate proved one of the last issues defying resolution in the recent budget debate that nearly culminated in a shutdown of the government;
- That the videos figured importantly in Indiana’s enacting a new defunding law;
- That the videos “are at or very near to the pinnacle of newsworthiness” and they “bear a commanding public interest of surpassing importance”;
- That YouTube, if it suppresses these videos, “will have to answer to those who believe it crucial that public policy – especially the investigation and prosecution of sex criminals who prey on minors – be forged through political processes that are free, open, transparent, and fully informed with all relevant, crucial, unedited data fully accessible for all of those concerned; and that, “Tolerance” of such gross wrongdoing masks nothing less than callous indifference to the predatory sexual exploitation of children.
This most recent letter from the Thomas More Society to YouTube drew a near-immediate response whereafter all previously suppressed videos were reinstated. Read the fully story at LifeNews.com.
Live Action will continue to stand strong against threats of censorship by Planned Parenthood. Please take time to get involved in the Live Action movement or make a donation to support our work to uncover Planned Parenthood’s continuing attacks against the preborn.
