A court battle lasting nearly a decade has come to an end for two pro-life undercover journalists who exposed Planned Parenthood’s alleged fetal body part trafficking scandal.
David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, and journalist Sandra Merritt, announced on Monday that the criminal cases against them have ended, with the California Attorney General’s office agreeing to a plea deal that includes no prison time or fines for the journalists. CMP’s videos showed Planned Parenthood executives ‘haggling’ with companies like StemExpress over the prices of organs and tissues taken from the preborn children its abortionists had killed. Some of those children were potentially born alive before their hearts were harvested.
“After 9 years of unprecedented political prosecution, putting an end to the lawfare launched by Kamala Harris is a huge victory for my investigative reporting and for the public’s right to know the truth about Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby body parts. Now we must all get to work to protect families and infants from the criminal abortion-industrial complex,” Daleiden told Live Action News.
According to Merritt’s attorneys with Liberty Counsel:
The negotiated plea agreement includes the state dropping all remaining felony counts. Merritt will plead ‘No Contest’ to only one felony charge, which, after a one-year probationary period will be reduced to a misdemeanor at sentencing, and then expunged from her record entirely.
Merritt will serve no prison time, will pay no fines, and will have no other penalties imposed for revealing the truth about Planned Parenthood. The deal is essentially a complete victory for Merritt in this politically-motivated criminal case.
CMP’s videos exposed the scandal after Merritt and Daleiden went undercover at various locations, including the National Abortion Federation’s 2014 and 2015 abortion convention and trade shows. Video recorded at those events, as well as at dinners and inside Planned Parenthood offices, shows executives discussing the price negotiations and sales of human body parts.
“Sandra Merritt did nothing wrong. She did the right thing by exposing the depravity of the abortion industry. This plea agreement ends an unjust criminal case by dropping these baseless criminal charges without any prison time, fines or other penalties,” said Matt Staver, founder and chairman of The Liberty Counsel.
“Murdering human babies to harvest their body parts for profit is evil and there is no excuse for Sandra’s political persecution. This is an extraordinary result for Sandra and the state of California deserves to walk away virtually empty handed.”
READ: ‘Public opinion would change’: Brutality of abortion exposed at Congressional hearing
“The recordings capture Planned Parenthood executives haggling over the prices of baby body parts, picking through bloodied arms and legs of aborted babies in a pie tray, and discussing how to alter abortion methods to avoid violating partial-birth abortion law and obtain more profitable body parts to sell,” said Liberty Counsel.
Featured in one of the CMP videos were email contracts sent to Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast. While publicly, Planned Parenthood told the New York Times it turned the deal down, in video testimony of her deposition under oath, Planned Parenthood’s Tram Nguyen could be heard admitting that she actually intended to move forward with the financial arrangement.
The video disputes the claim that Planned Parenthood was only being reimbursed for costs associated with harvesting and shipping the body parts. As previously reported by Live Action News, that testimony revealed that payment was only made to Planned Parenthood by StemExpress if StemExpress was able to obtain “usable” fetal body parts and tissues — meaning Planned Parenthood deceived the public when it claimed it only collected reimbursements for employees’ time and costs.
Planned Parenthood officials went on to admit under oath to selling the body parts of babies they had been paid to abort. Documents showed that executives at Planned Parenthood’s national headquarters were aware of the body parts sales.
Abortionist Deborah Nucatola admitted under oath that she knew Planned Parenthood Los Angeles was receiving payments for body parts, yet she claimed she never bothered to ensure the process was carried out legally. Nucatola is the abortionist seen in CMP’s first video discussing over wine and salad how she illegally altered abortion procedures to better harvest body parts. Dr. Mary Gatter was also featured in the under-oath testimony in the video above, and was previously caught undercover haggling over prices for aborted body parts, infamously stating, “I want a Lamborghini.”
After CMP began releasing the videos, then-California Attorney General (later Vice President) Kamala Harris met with Planned Parenthood officials in 2016, after which she ordered criminal investigations into Merritt and Daleiden, including searching Daleiden’s home.
The state’s next AG, Xavier Becerra (later Biden’s Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services), charged them both with violating California’s recording law.
The state had never before criminally prosecuted undercover journalists for recordings made in the public interest, said Liberty Counsel.
Editor’s Note 1/28/25: This article was updated with further information.
Tell President Trump, RFK, Jr., Elon, and Vivek:
Stop killing America’s future. Defund Planned Parenthood NOW!
