The following comes from an August 13 LifeSite News article by Steven Ertelt:
In a victory for the pro-life activists behind the expose’ videos that have caught Planned Parenthood selling aborted babies and their body parts for research, a judge has ruled the biotech firm StemExpress can’t take videos and documentation from them.
While the videos have focused on the Planned Parenthood abortion business, the biotech firm StemExpress, which buys and resells aborted baby body parts from the abortion giant, has filed a lawsuit seeking to block some information the Center for Medical Progress obtained in its three year undercover operation.
Last month, a court in California blocked the pro-life group from releasing any videos regarding certain meetings of the middleman, StemExpress. The restraining order does not apply to the Planned Parenthood abortion business or even to StemExpress in its entirety, making it so additional videos were released.
Now, a Superior Court of the State of California issued a decision Thursday in StemExpress v. The Center for Medical Progress, which prohibits a biomedical company from accessing the material of an investigative journalist exposing Planned Parenthood’s selling of fetal body parts.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joanne O’Donnell said the firm is unlikely to prevail in its case to abrogate Center for Medical Progress’s First Amendment rights.
“Plaintiff does not persuade the Court that the discovery it seeks is necessary to obtain the preliminary injunction. That is because it appears unlikely that the Court is going to grant the preliminary injunction,” Judge O’Donnell said in her Thursday order.
“The injunction Plaintiff seeks would prevent Defendants from disseminating the videotapes,” said the judge. “First, this proposed injunction would constitute a prior restraint on the Defendants’ rights under the First Amendment and the parallel protections under the California Constitution.”
“StemExpress, a for-profit company partnered with over 30 abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood, to harvest and sell aborted baby parts and provide a “financial benefit” to Planned Parenthood clinics, is attempting to use meritless litigation to cover-up this illegal baby parts trade, suppress free speech, and silence the citizen press reporting on issues of burning concern to the American public,” Center for Medical Progress said in a statement.
The group continued in its statement to LifeNews: “They are not succeeding—their initial petition was rejected by the court, and their second petition was eviscerated to a narrow and contingent order about an alleged recording pending Center for Medical Progress’s opportunity to respond. The Center for Medical Progress follows all applicable laws in the course of our investigative journalism work and will contest all attempts from Planned Parenthood and their allies to silence our First Amendment rights and suppress investigative journalism.”
Stem-Express and Planned Parenthood cannot ultimately succeed, legally. Prior restraint of the exercise of the First Amendment rights of The Center for Medical Progress is disfavored, placing a heavy, almost insurmountable, burden on PP and Stem-Ex.
Seeing the truth in the light of day is never pretty if you are an Evil Doer. And there, Catholic Reader, is the rub: PP and Stem-Ex do not want what they do to be seen by everyone. Their executives and doctors know, likely through the exercise of their conscience, that their “dark arts” are not value-positive and will not be seen that way by almost all Americans. Of course, there are still the dopes at the Smithsonian that refuse to remove the bust of Nazi-hero Margaret Sanger from…
(Continued) “a museum there. Evil only needs the light of Truth to be destroyed. (FYI–Margaret Sanger is a major feminist heroine; just listen to Hillary Clinton wax poetic about her and her “accomplishments”.)
Time to pay attention to the Synod in October. Same thing: odious creatures seek the dark; expect a blackout regarding the “discussions” that will be going on there. Of course, so much has been done — most recently by asking Abp. Cupich to be a regular attendee — that there may well be little debate anyway; just some announcement of doctrinal insanity.