Anti-Abortion Activists Ask Court To OK Release Of Secretly Recorded Videos

BAY AREA, CA – Anti-abortion activists who infiltrated abortion provider meetings asked a federal appeals court in San Francisco Tuesday to lift a lower court order that bars them from making secretly recorded videotapes public.

Leader David Daleiden and other members of the Irvine-based Center for Medical Progress claim the public interest overrides a strict confidentiality agreement they signed when they entered National Abortion
Federation meetings disguised as fetal tissue buyers.

"The defendants cannot waive the public's right to know," center attorney Catherine Short told a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Daleiden and colleagues penetrated annual meetings of the federation in San Francisco in 2014 and Baltimore in 2015 by using false names and setting up a phony company, Biomax Procurement Services, to pose as
exhibitors at the events.

They secretly recorded a total of 504 hours of video and audiotape at the two meetings.

Daleiden and others are appealing a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge William Orrick in February. The injunction prohibits them from releasing any tapes or any other confidential information, such as doctors' names, they obtained at the meetings.

Orrick said the center members entered the meeting under false pretenses and violated the confidentiality agreement.

He said in a review of the tapes, which are sealed to the public, he found no evidence of illegal activity by the federation members and said release of the tapes would put them in danger of threats, harassment and violence.

The now-sealed federation meeting tapes are separate from other recordings of Planned Parenthood doctors that were released by the center last year.

At Tuesday's hearing, two judges on the panel closely questioned both sides on when, if ever, the public interest or the need to report a crime would justify breaking a confidentiality agreement.

Judge Consuelo Callahan said, "I'm very concerned that if I see something I think is a crime, you think I can't go to the police."

Marc Hearron, a lawyer for the federation, responded that Orrick concluded the tapes showed no evidence of crimes, but said the injunction doesn't prevent law enforcement officers from using a subpoena to obtain
information about suspected crimes.

Hearron argued, "National Abortion Federation members have a right to privacy, security and safety. Three people in Colorado were murdered partially as a result of videos released last year."

Judge Andrew Hurwitz said, "I'm looking for a measuring stick. How much public interest gets you out of your contractual obligations (to the confidentiality agreement)?

"A little public interest or a lot of public interest?" he asked.

The third member of the panel, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy of Montana, a visiting jurist who was assigned to the case, did not speak during the public part of the hearing.

The final part of the court session was closed to the public so that attorneys could argue about whether the sealed tapes showed possible illegal conduct.

The panel has no deadline to issue a written ruling.

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