“The videos, which claim Planned Parenthood profits from selling fetal tissue, caused public outrage and launched nationwide rallies. As many as seven states, including Texas, have planned hearings or investigations into Planned Parenthood.”

For years, a group of pro-life activists and politicians have waged a fierce political and brand war with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a billion-dollar nonprofit that has positioned itself as a champion for women’s health.

Pro-life groups and other critics called the abortion giant—Planned Parenthood terminates more than 300,000 pregnancies per year—a rogue organization that misuses about $500 million a year in government funds to underwrite its lucrative abortion business.

After a string of victories from 2011, the movement to defund Planned Parenthood largely stalled out. A month ago, the movement was dead in the water.

Not anymore.

A series of undercover videos, showing Planned Parenthood executives haggling over the price for donated fetal tissue and organs over lunch and during a dissection, have the abortion giant on the defensive.

The videos, which claim Planned Parenthood profits from selling fetal tissue, caused public outrage and launched nationwide rallies. As many as seven states, including Texas, have planned hearings or investigations into Planned Parenthood’s tissue donation program. Pro-life members of the US Senate introduced a bill to cut all federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

All of which is what David Daleiden wanted.

Daleiden, 26, is executive director of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), the pro-life nonprofit that produced the videos. He’s a former director of research for Live Action, a pro-life group that specializes in undercover abortion clinic videos. Daleiden told CT he started CMP to focus on more long-term, in-depth projects.

For years, he told CT, Planned Parenthood has donated thousands of fetal remains to biotech middlemen, who resell them to researchers.

Federal law allows Planned Parenthood to be reimbursed for the reasonable expense of obtaining donated fetal tissue. But Daleiden believes Planned Parenthood profits from these sales.

Armed with hidden video cameras and a $120,000 budget, he and other activists spent two-and-a-half to three years developing evidence to prove that. They have released three videos so far and hope to eventually release a dozen, including a new video about Planned Parenthood that debuted July 30.

A California court issued a restraining order on July 29, barring the release of any video showing leaders of StemExpress, a tissue procurement company. StemExpress lawyers claim CMP’s recordings were illegal.

Daleiden spoke recently with CT senior news editor Bob Smietana.

Editor’s Note: This interview was edited for clarity.

When did you first learn about the business of fetal tissue donations?

It first came across my radar in 2009, when I was attending a stem cell conference at UCLA. It struck me as very bizarre, something that couldn’t be real or something that was very uncommon.

Then I revisited the issue in 2010 and began to realize that this is not something unusual or far out in left field. The sale and commercial exploitation of aborted fetal tissue is very common and it happens every single day at large, high-volume Planned Parenthood clinics around the country.

You aren’t the first person to raise questions about alleged profits being made off of fetal tissue. Back in 2000, there were high-profile reports and a congressional hearing on fetal tissue donations. Did those earlier reports influence your work?

That was something that surprised me—that no one had looked into this issue for 15 years at this point. The last time this issue was in the public discourse was back in 2000, all because of the very seminal investigation and exposé done by Mark Crutcher (of the pro-life group Life Dynamics). I wanted to do something that would go beyond the work Mark had done. In Mark’s report, there was not a lot of focus on the supplier—on the people who were actually terminating the fetuses and using the abortions to get high quality body parts. That wasn’t really covered in 2000.

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