Confidential Planned Parenthood video leaked

Complete raw footage from the Planned Parenthood videos surfaced Thursday on the conservative website Got News?, whose editor said he had gotten it from a House staffer despite lawmakers’ pledge to keep it confidential.Editor Charles Johnson released the full footage Thursday even after the National Abortion Federation got a temporary restraining order a day earlier prohibiting any dissemination. Johnson vowed to “contest any unconstitutional prior restraint of speech.”The abortion providers group had gone to court after Johnson’s website put part of the video online earlier this week.An anti-abortion group called the Center for Medical Progress — which had released the series of videos over the summer depicting Planned Parenthood profiting from fetal tissue donation — had previously provided the full video under subpoena to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Johnson told POLITICO in an email that he obtained the raw tapes from a high-ranking congressional staffer “who felt morally compelled to have them released.”Planned Parenthood has denied any wrongdoing in what it says is a limited, legal donation program for scientific research. The organization recently said it would no longer take any reimbursement for donations, not even to cover costs.The National Abortion Federation has been fighting the release of the video, saying the tapes have spurred threats and endangered people depicted in the footage, and it had obtained a court order temporarily blocking CMP filmmaker David Daleiden from releasing some of the video. The federation called on House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who had said he would keep the tapes confidential but let both Republicans and Democratic committee members view them, to investigate the leak.”I think Rep. Chaffetz needs to conduct a full investigation to get to the bottom of whether the leak came from Congress,” federation CEO Vicki Saporta said.“Our concern is that since the first videos have been released there has been an unprecedented number of threats against abortion providers,” she said. “Since the first video was released, there have been four arsons in Planned Parenthood clinics in different parts of the country. Just yesterday in another Planned Parenthood facility, an individual with a hatchet destroyed the inside of the clinic.”

 

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