Last weekend, the Orange County District Attorney’s office in southern California completed the first successful prosecution of a major node in Planned Parenthood’s alleged baby body parts network: Sister companies DaVinci Biosciences and DV Biologics, business partners with Planned Parenthood of Orange & San Bernardino Counties (PPOSBC), signed a $7.8 million settlement in which they were banned from doing business in the state of California ever again and admitted breaking state and federal laws by selling aborted fetal organs and tissue from Planned Parenthood for profit.

In their press release announcing this win, the DA’s office states: “the (Orange County District Attorney) opened an investigation into DaVinci Biosciences and DV Biologics after a complaint was submitted by the Center for Medical Progress regarding the illegal sale of aborted fetal tissue by both companies.”

The DA concluded: “This settlement seized all profits from DV Biologics and DaVinci Biosciences, which they acquired by viewing body parts as a commodity and illegally selling fetal tissues for valuable consideration.”

The DA’s successful prosecution of Planned Parenthood’s business partners for the illegal sale of aborted baby parts is a vindication of my organization’s citizen journalism methods and accuracy.

For over two years, Planned Parenthood has breathlessly asserted to anyone who would listen that their programs to allegedly sell aborted fetal organs and tissues were completely above reproach, arguing that they only receive legal reimbursements and follow all patient consent rules. But the guilty plea by the DaVinci companies, which worked with a major Planned Parenthood abortion center in southern California, blows Planned Parenthood’s dubious assertions of innocence completely out of the water.

PPOSBC Communications Vice President Nichole Ramirez told news media in 2015 that no money ever changes hands over fetal body parts harvested there: “Patients have full consent about these donations, and there’s absolutely no fees charged or reimbursements received.” In reality, the PPOSBC consent form for tissue donation never informed pregnant women that the DaVinci companies would be selling their fetal parts for as high as $1100 per item.

Additionally, during the course of DaVinci’s relationship with PPOSBC, DaVinci made multiple financial contributions to Planned Parenthood, in an apparent “pay-to-slay” scheme of kickbacks in exchange for the privilege of harvesting highly lucrative, late-term fetal body parts.

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PPOSBC commits nearly 9500 abortions every year, according to their 2015-2016 annual report, and aborts healthy infants up to 24 weeks (“23 weeks and 6 days”) — six months — of pregnancy. While undercover at a meeting in 2015, I spoke with Dr. Jennifer Russo, PPOSBC’s Medical Director, about their partnership with DaVinci. She admitted that PPOSBC would sometimes not use any feticidal chemicals to kill the baby before the abortion procedure. “You’re looking ideally for an intact specimen?” she asked me. “It happens sometimes, but it’s pretty rare” to obtain fully intact fetuses, she told me, “But, we try.”

In light of the news announced last week that the U.S. Department of Justice has launched a federal investigation into Planned Parenthood and their business partners in alleged harvesting and selling aborted fetal body parts, the next step after the successful DaVinci prosecution is for PPOSBC and other Planned Parenthood affiliates to be held accountable under the law.

Dr. Russo’s indication that live fetuses may come out completely intact at her late-term Planned Parenthood abortion clinic is not the only such statement on camera from a Planned Parenthood Medical Director.

Who can forget Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, between wine and salad, admitting: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact,” and her instructions to abortion doctors in training: “Any research case, I’ll do … we really need to do this, intact.” The chance of infants being born alive through illegal partial-birth abortions should prompt immediate and severe DOJ action.

Nor were the DaVinci companies the only ones making significant sums off of the whole or dismembered body parts of unborn children.

StemExpress, LLC, started in 2010 with $9,000 and a partnership with Planned Parenthood Mar Monte; in a few short years it grew to a multimillion company and it now aims for revenues of $100 million by 2022. Contracts acquired by congressional investigations show this company offering $55 to $75 to Planned Parenthood per fetal body part “determined in the clinic to be usable” — with nearly 17,000 abortions every year at a Planned Parenthood affiliate like Mar Monte (according to its 2016 annual report), such a contract is worth up to $1 million annually in extra revenue.

Now that a California district attorney, and Planned Parenthood’s own business partners, have debunked Planned Parenthood’s feigned innocence and vindicated CMP’s citizen journalism reporting, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and his predecessor Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) should be ashamed of themselves for trying to prop up Planned Parenthood’s narrative with bogus political charges against me and my fellow investigators.

And judges like San Francisco’s Judge William Orrick III, a federal Obama appointee with extrajudicial ties to Planned Parenthood, must recuse himself, as CMP is asking the 9th Circuit to require, and his gag order against CMP’s remaining undercover footage, now being appealed to the Supreme Court, must be dissolved.

Evidence matters, in the media and in the law, and the video camera doesn’t lie. Planned Parenthood’s allies like Becerra, Harris, and Orrick should now be on notice not to cover up evidence of alleged crimes, before the Department of Justice has Planned Parenthood in a settlement agreement like DaVinci and their collusion to protect the illegal sale of baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains is revealed for all to see.

LifeNews Note: David Daleiden is the founder of The Center for Medical Progress. Follow him on Twitter @daviddaleiden.