Planned Parenthood is now struggling to explain a legal aspect of its practice that has gone largely unnoticed — procuring tissues from aborted fetuses for medical research — in a crisis that shows no signs of abating. Cecile Richards, the group’s president, told ABC News on Sunday, “Planned Parenthood has broken no laws.” She said the activists responsible were from “the most militant wing of the anti-abortion movement in this country” and were seeking to entrap doctors.

The activist behind the videos, David Daleiden, has said he has enough covertly recorded footage for perhaps a dozen videos that he could release, one a week, for the next few months. Planned Parenthood has told Congress that it believes the next installments could have a racial element to them, with its employees possibly discussing the different characteristics of the extracted fetal tissue based on race. The group also says it knows that Mr. Daleiden or his colleagues were admitted into a clinic area that processes tissue after abortions, and it believes they may have obtained footage of that as well.

The tactics could backfire if people perceive them as extreme and dishonest. Democrats have already begun making this case, saying the footage was edited in a misleading way. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said last week that the videos were “selectively edited to distort not just the words of the individual speaking, but also the position of Planned Parenthood.” Not shown in the videos is the doctors’ insistence that they would not profit from tissue donation, which is illegal, and that their motivation for collecting donated tissue was scientific, not financial.

But anti-abortion activists say their new efforts are forcing their opponents to defend their own words and beliefs on the issue in a way they had not had to before.

“It’s very difficult to deliver a message that people don’t basically believe,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that funds anti-abortion candidates. “We’re the source of the information, so they think we’re biased.” But in this case, she added, “it’s coming from them, not us.”

Abortion opponents hope the videos will provoke people to consider the humanity of the unborn, much like discussing ultrasounds can — albeit in a much more jarring and graphic way. Ms. Conway, the Republican pollster, calls this a “shock the conscience, warm the heart” approach.

Mr. Daleiden’s approach shows how the movement’s tactics. He and his fellow activists took the time to study an aspect of Planned Parenthood’s practice that was largely unknown to outsiders. And they trained extensively — learning the correct terminology and financial information — to give the false impression that they were professionals.