Planned Parenthood's butchery, the Schneiderman scandal, and the 'Midnight Sun treatment'

By Matt C. Abbott

The following letter is "from the desk" of Thomas Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the laudable Thomas More Society, "a not-for-profit, national public interest law firm dedicated to restoring respect in law for life, family, and religious liberty." Click here to visit the firm's website.

I have several items of big news in this letter:

• As you may have seen in the press, the pro-abortion Attorney General of New York who has been tormenting 10 courageous sidewalk counselors in federal court has resigned amidst a shocking sex scandal, which I'll describe in a moment.
  
  
• The pro-life Governor of Iowa has signed the toughest pro-life law passed by any state since Roe v. Wade back in 1973: a fetal heartbeat law that outlaws abortion when the baby's heartbeat can be detected. This monumental law is a frontal assault on our nation's abortion empire. The State of Iowa has asked us to defend the law in court for them as the ACLU already has challenged the law in a federal lawsuit in Des Moines.
  
  
• A federal panel of three judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against our motion to disqualify their colleague Judge William Orrick for bias in the David Daleiden lawsuits. They also rejected our appeal of Judge Orrick's denial of our "anti-SLAPP" motion to dismiss Planned Parenthood's state law claims – setbacks we'll contend with as the federal civil cases proceed both in the trial court and on appeal.
  
  
• Perhaps the biggest news of all: Judge Christopher Hite in San Francisco's California state felony criminal court has scheduled a preliminary hearing to test whether there was enough evidence to prove "probable cause" for the 15 felony charges the Attorney General filed against David Daleiden. This hearing will take place in open court from September 10 through September 19 – or longer, if we need more time. This could prove to be a truly blockbuster spectacle!
  

Here's why the preliminary hearing on the criminal charges against David looks like it may be such a major spectacle. It could be the biggest media event in the history of David's efforts since his initial release of undercover videos that shocked the nation.

You see, some of the most notorious Planned Parenthood abortionists and their business partners will have to testify LIVE at the preliminary hearing. They'll be on the hot seat, under oath. Our team of attorneys – including my main helper Peter Breen and I, along with former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley and his main helper, Brent Ferreira – will grill them about their gruesome, illegal racket of trafficking in aborted babies' body parts. The abortionists, whose identities the State has tried to keep anonymous till now, will have to take the hot seat and submit to cross examination!

In short, because in America criminal trials must be public trials, this hearing should turn out to be one of the most serious abortion-related court hearings in years: an unprecedented and historic legal proceeding in which so much of the ugly hidden truth about abortion should now be fully exposed to public view!

Let me make this crystal clear. All of the lawsuits against David Daleiden are dangerous, but these 15 false felony charges against this innocent young pro-life hero and his helper, Sandra Merritt, pose the most danger. But they are equally fraught with grave risk for the abortionists. How so? Because they are dreadfully fearful of public exposure!

The abortionists are out for blood!

The abortionists are bent on locking David up and throwing away the key. They want to ruin his life, humiliate and discredit him as a serial "felon," and salt him away in a prison cell. They well know the criminal case against him could put him behind bars in a state penitentiary for many years, even decades. The case could turn out to be the trial of the century.

As you may recall, court proceedings in California are often televised. Recalling the O.J. Simpson murder case, we plan to move to have David's case televised. This would make it even more sensational, an incredible vehicle to teach the public so many of the grim and grisly truths about abortion that David's videos uncovered!

While the abortionists may gloat over their success in targeting David Daleiden in the Attorney General's cross hairs and getting him criminally prosecuted, the upcoming preliminary hearing should be a two-edged sword. The abortionists' gruesome practices and their callous disregard for the inherent dignity of human beings, which David's videos exposed, will be on trial in the court of public opinion. Our team of attorneys will be asking the abortionists and other witnesses about shocking practices such as these:

1. "Snipping" babies' faces to extract intact fetal brains for illegal sale;

2. Committing partial-birth abortions on large, well developed babies – which federal law prohibits – to obtain "top quality" hearts, livers, kidneys, and other fetal organs for sale; and

3. Sorting through a jumbled pile of arms, legs, hands, feet, and rib cages for anything of value that can be sold.

David's accusers want to hide behind the cloak of anonymity

Incredibly, the pro-abortion California Attorney General, a bosom buddy of Planned Parenthood, feels he doesn't need to identify David's accusers. His complaint simply refers to them "Does" as in "Doe No. 1" or "Doe No. 2." But that's intolerable at a public trial!

After all, this is America where everyone accused of a crime is entitled to confront and cross-examine his or her accusers at a public trial, according to the Sixth Amendment – a key part of the Bill of Rights. Anonymous witnesses testifying through a curtain or behind a screen would make a mockery of justice. It would be a kangaroo court, harking back to the notorious Star Chamber trials during an inglorious phase of England's past.

David has strong defenses to the false criminal charges. David's "crimes," according to the California attorney general, are that he secretly recorded private conversations. But when you watch David's videos you can easily tell that none of those conversations was private. Some of the "Does" even admitted as much! Conversations in a restaurant or exhibit hall are easily overheard by passersby. We'll tell you more about our defenses as we prepare for the preliminary hearing over the next few months.

On other fronts in the Daleiden civil cases, we've taken two big punches from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. First, a three-Judge panel shot down our motion to disqualify Judge William Orrick for bias. Second, the same panel rejected our appeal of Judge Orrick's denial of our anti-SLAPP motion. In that motion we had argued that the abortionists' California state law claims against David were so abusively meritless and retaliatory against his pro-life advocacy that they deserved to be dismissed. We also argued that we were entitled to recover our defense fees and expenses.

These two rulings were adverse and painful blows, but we're resolved to fight on, harder than ever, as the Chief Judge who authored the anti-SLAPP ruling against us also urged that we seek "rehearing" before all the Judges on the 9th Circuit. And we may still have options to seek Judge Orrick's removal from the case in furtherance of justice.

In addition, we're still appealing the unjust, illegal, punitive criminal sanctions of nearly $200,000 assessed against David and also against our criminal defense co-counsel. And we're undaunted as we fully expect to win that appeal!

The Seattle law suit against David is also heating up

You may recall that Planned Parenthood abortionists and their business partners, including fetal researchers at the University of Washington (UW), are suing David to block his request for public records of aborted babies' body parts trafficking.

The abortionists want to keep these records secret, even though the UW is a public institution and taxpayer money ($500 million for UW alone!) is apparently used to buy the aborted babies' body parts.

The abortionists and the fetal researchers want to stay hidden in the shadows. But David wants to expose their wicked, illegal deeds to the light of day and call them to account. That's why we're appealing the ruling of a federal judge who has ignored the earlier appellate ruling in our favor and continues to let the tax-supported traffickers in aborted babies' body parts hide behind the veil of anonymity. Indeed, it's outrageous!

We're confident that David is in the right, and we remain committed to see this through to the end. Those whose labors are supported by taxes must be held accountable. David deserves justice, and the Planned Parenthood abortionists and executives and their business partners deserve their comeuppance, which means at least a public accounting for their actions, if not fines and prison....

Iowa officials asked us to defend its tough new abortion law

It's also huge news that the Iowa legislature passed a fetal heartbeat bill, and the pro-life Governor of Iowa signed it. But scarcely was the ink dry on the Governor's signature on this law when the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the regional Planned Parenthood affiliate, and a local abortion provider filed suit to invalidate this law, even though it won't go into effect until July 1. The pro-abortion Attorney General of Iowa declined to defend the law, but he has asked our Thomas More Society to defend the heartbeat law in court against this legal challenge.

The Iowa Attorney General told Martin Cannon, an Iowan and one of our lead attorneys, "We know enough about you and the Thomas More Society to feel we want you to defend the [heartbeat] bill."

This is a colossal development as the fetal heartbeat bill directly challenges a key concept underlying Roe v. Wade that "fetal viability" (i.e., the baby's ability to live outside the womb) is the earliest point at which a state may restrict abortions. Before that point, abortions are unrestricted. The heartbeat of the baby in the womb can be detected long before viability. If the heartbeat law stands, it would undermine Roe v. Wade.

But the ACLU didn't sue in federal court or invoke federal abortion law. Instead, it sued in state court, claiming the new law violates a right to abortion under the Iowa State Constitution. ACLU is asking the Iowa courts to invent a new right to abortion under Iowa law – an abortion right that could survive even if the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade! But we've funded authoritative legal research showing no basis for ACLU's claim and that Iowa's Constitution doesn't provide for any abortion rights.

Sex scandal brings down a pro-abortion 'champion of women's rights'!

In previous letters I've described how the unabashedly pro-abortion Attorney General of New York Eric Schneiderman – a man who has promoted abortion ever since he first volunteered at an abortion mill at the age of 17 – has been harassing 10 courageous sidewalk counselors in New York. We're defending these ten heroes in federal court in Brooklyn against Schneiderman's false charges that they "harass women."

Planned Parenthood and the ACLU saw Schneiderman as a hero for his outspoken opposition to harassment and violence against women. He had denounced the disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and applauded Weinstein's accusers for their courage in speaking out against his sexual harassment.

But even the pro-abortionists who considered Schneiderman their champion threw him under the bus when four of Schneiderman's victims of violence and sexual abuse stepped forward with credible accusations that shocked even the anti-lifers:

• He slapped one of his sexual partners on the side of the head so hard that it caused blood to trickle out of her ear down to her collar bone. Her ear bothered her for months.
  
  The slap also caused balance problems and ringing in the ear. After the hard slap, his victim alleges that he started choking her, and "the choking was very hard. It was really bad."
  
  
• As a state senator, Schneiderman actually wrote a law, which passed, making life-threatening strangulation a grave crime. His law also criminalized less severe choking in which the perpetrator has "an intent to impede breathing."
  
  
• One victim, an attorney, alleges that he hit her so hard that the blow left a red handprint. A photograph taken the next day "shows faint raised marks splayed on her cheek," according to Ronan Farrow's article in the New Yorker, exposing the Schneiderman sex scandal.
  
  
• His victims endured abusive, vulgar language and cruel remarks that are too gross to repeat in this letter.
  
  
• Two of his victims claim that he said, "If you ever left me, I'd kill you" or words to that effect.
  
  
• One of his victims, a native of Sri Lanka, said, "Sometimes, he'd tell me to call him Master, and he'd slap me until I did. He started calling me his 'brown slave' and demanding that I repeat that I was 'his property.'"
  
  
• Another victim alleges that he used to spit on her and slap her during sex.
  
  

Schneiderman resigned in disgrace just hours after the sex scandal broke. But it's too early to tell what impact this might have, if any, on our defense of the 10 sidewalk counselors. As this letter goes to print, we're leaving again for New York to fight hard to win justice for these New York pro-life heroes.

Officers who tortured innocent pro-life woman with the 'Midnight Sun treatment' must face a jury trial!

Imagine being falsely accused of a crime by a lying accuser. Imagine being held for 49 hours in solitary confinement with bright overhead lights always kept on and doors slamming throughout the day and night. This torture is known as the "Midnight Sun treatment." Imagine as well that you didn't know if or when you'd be released. This nightmare was real for a gentle, kind pro-life prayer warrior named Kimberly Thames.

Here's what happened. One day Kimberly was praying the Rosary with a Catholic nun at an abortion center in Westland, Michigan. She kindly told the security guard on duty that she would pray he would find a job that protects life instead of protecting abortion. But the guard called the police and accused Kimberly of making a bomb threat.

When the police arrived, the nun backed up Kimberly's claim of innocence, telling the police that she never had said anything about a bomb. But the police arrested Kimberly, who spent the next 49 hours in a jail cell under the "Midnight Sun."

We sued the police officers for their flagrant abuse of Kimberly's civil rights. U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh just ruled that our lawsuit deserves to go to trial. Judge Steeh pointed out that the police officers didn't seem to credit the accusation for which they arrested Kimberly. They never ordered an evacuation of the clinic nor searched the building or its environs for any sign of a bomb. So, Kimberly will now have a jury trial. Please help us get justice for Kimberly and our other clients.

© Matt C. Abbott