David Robert Daleiden (born 1989) is an American anti-abortion activist who worked for Live Action before founding the Irvine, California-based Center for Medical Progress in 2013.
Early life and family
Daleiden says he is the "child of a crisis pregnancy" and grew up "culturally Catholic."
Daleiden graduated from Davis High School in 2007 and later from Claremont McKenna College.
Anti-abortion activities
In 2015, Daleiden released videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing fees for human fetal tissue and organs. Daleiden, an associate of Lila Rose, ran a Live Action chapter in 2007 and was the organization's director of research "during the early stages" of the project to make secret recordings of Planned Parenthood clinics. He originally registered his Center for Medical Progress [C.M.P.] as a tax-exempt biomedical charity. In furtherance of his plan, he set up a fake biomedical research company called Biomax Procurement Services. Daleiden and his collaborator, Sandra Merritt, posed as employees of Biomax and orchestrated surreptitious recordings of interviews where his associates asked about tissue donation costs, and questioned whether tissue samples could be acquired from African American patients with sickle-cell anemia. After the publication of the videos, Daleiden re-registered his Center for Medical Progress as a journalistic organization.
Planned Parenthood states that they may donate fetal tissue at the request of a patient, but such tissue is never sold. According to Molly Redden of The Guardian, the content of the videos was "broadly considered to be false, the product of aggressive and misleading editing". Fusion GPS, the production company Planned Parenthood hired in the wake of the scandal to debunk the videos, rigorously analyzed them and found what they considered to be "...'substantive omissions' on Daleiden's part. According to the investigation, the reviewers could not determine 'the extent to which C.M.P.'s undisclosed edits and cuts distort the meaning of the encounters the videos purport to document.' But, it said, 'the manipulation of the videos does mean they have no evidentiary value in a legal context and cannot be relied upon for any official inquiries' unless C.M.P. provides investigators with its original material, and that material is independently authenticated as unaltered.",
The videos were shown to Republican Congressmen Trent Franks and Tim Murphy two weeks before being made publicly available, leading commentators to note that the timing of the release appeared to coincide with a bipartisan bill to raise money for Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
On July 31, 2015, the National Abortion Federation sued CMP and Daleiden, alleging that Daleiden's campaign violated its members' privacy and threatened their safety.
On January 22, 2016, Daleiden appeared on C-SPAN for a question-and-answer session that included viewer call-ins. He advocated reverting current laws back to the time when all elective abortions were criminal acts. The segment's opposing view was presented by NARAL Pro-Choice America policy director Donna Crane.
Injunction against further publication of videos
As part of the National Abortion Federation's lawsuit against Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress, Federal Judge William Orrick III and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an injunction in July 2015 forbidding Daleiden and CMP from publishing any more videos they had illegally obtained at private professional meetings. In March 2017 a federal appeals court in March upheld Orrick's ruling, but new videos then appeared on the website of Daleiden's attorneys, former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley and Brentford J. Ferreira. On July 11, 2017, Orrick found attorneys Cooley and Ferreira in contempt of court, saying, "With respect to the criminal defense counsel, they do not get to decide whether they can violate the preliminary injunction".
On July 17, Orrick found Daleiden, the Center for Medical Progress and their lawyers, Steve Cooley and Brentford Ferreira, in contempt of court. Orrick ordered Daleiden to turn over video footage and other materials related to his 2016 preliminary injunction.
On August 31, Orrick found Daleiden and his attorneys, Steve Cooley and Brentford Ferreira, owed $195,359 compensation to the National Abortion Federation for legal fees and increased security for "expenses incurred as a result of the violation of my Preliminary Injunction Order". Orrick wrote that Daleiden's attorneys, Cooley and Ferreira, were included in the sanctions intended to ensure "current and future compliance" with his order.