An incredible story is unfolding in California. The headline in the Los Angeles Times yesterday is this,

“Two antiabortion activists behind undercover Planned Parenthood videos charged with 15 felonies”

The Attorney General of California announced to the public yesterday that he is filing 15 different felony counts against those who had exposed Planned Parenthood over the course of the last couple of years in terms of a series of videos. Matt Hamilton, reporting for the Los Angeles Times tells us,

“Two antiabortion activists whose controversial undercover videos accused Planned Parenthood doctors of selling fetal tissue were charged Tuesday with 15 felonies by California prosecutors. State Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra’s office alleges that David Daleiden and his co-conspirator, Sandra Merritt, filmed 14 people without their consent at meetings with women’s healthcare providers in Los Angeles, Pasadena, San Franciso and El Dorado.”

Hamilton went on to report,

“The edited videos were published online, prompting outrage among abortion foes and triggering a wave of threats to abortion providers and those who were secretly recorded.”

So what’s really going on here? This is a really big story. We’re looking at the fact that the Attorney General of California, California being one of the most liberal and pro-abortion states in the unions, is using the coercive power of the law in order to put an end to what they see as a threat to the abortion industrial complex, and that is the series of videos, those already released and those promised to be forthcoming, coming from the organization known as the Center for Medical Progress. The two people named in terms of these felony counts are the very people who are responsible primarily for the release and indeed the production of the videos themselves.

Let’s also look at the language used by the Los Angeles Times. We are told here that the videos were edited, true enough. We are told that the videos prompted outrage amongst abortion foes, true enough. We’re also told that the videos triggered a wave of threats to abortion providers. What the release of the videos also accomplished was to spark a national conversation, but disappointingly enough, that conversation has basically taken us nowhere in terms of any public or legal action against Planned Parenthood. We also need to remind ourselves that these videos demonstrated beyond any question that Planned Parenthood’s medical personnel, including its chief medical director, were intentionally destroying unborn human babies, strategically crushing their bodies in order to obtain tissues and organs for medical experimentation. There’s also no question that they were doing so while they were being reimbursed financially.

There is open discussion in terms of the recordings about how Planned Parenthood intended to profit by means of these transfers with the reimbursements. But when it came down to questions as to whether or not Planned Parenthood had broken the law in terms of the language that forbids the sale of human tissues and organ, well, that’s a very different matter, and those states found that Planned Parenthood had not technically violated the law. But we also need to remind ourselves before we look at the further developments this week that Planned Parenthood acknowledged and even organizationally apologized for the language that was used by its chief medical officer in those videos. The organization did not contest the identity of the persons who were filmed, nor did they contest the basic reality that these babies were being destroyed in the womb in a strategic way so that their tissues and organs could be harvested for medical experimentation.

The language used by the Attorney General of California was itself very interesting. As Los Angeles Times says Attorney General,

“Becerra, a veteran congressman who became attorney general in January, said his office ‘will not tolerate the criminal recording of confidential conversations.’”

He went on to say,

“The right to privacy is a cornerstone of California’s Constitution, and a right that is foundational in a free democratic society.”

There’s no question that what this amounts to is an effort to try to crack down on this organization and put an end to its threat to Planned Parenthood and the larger edifice of legal abortion in America. Thankfully, David French at National Review magazine did some research that is quite helpful and necessary here. In his report filed yesterday at National Review magazine, David French wrote

“Its decision to go after two journalists who exposed Planned Parenthood reeks of selective prosecution. It’s becoming increasingly clear that in the state of California, the right to abort a child is the chief liberty in the land, and all other liberties must bow before it. Few things illustrate this sad and morbid truth more than the decision of the California attorney general to prosecute (or, more accurately, persecute) David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt.”

He then goes on to make very clear that this is a selective prosecution. We knew this even before we look at the specific research that is produced here by David French. We know this because in many celebrated cases of journalism, it was the very same kind of surreptitiously videoed or recorded conversations that led to what liberals wanted rather than what they feared. He goes on to say this,

“California’s case not only fails on the merits, it reeks of selective prosecution. There is no shortage of examples of concealed-camera videos in California exposing scandalous behavior.”

He cites a report done by Sean Davis of The Federalist who has also been raising this question. They go back to 2014 when a group known as Mercy for Animals released an undercover video that showed widespread animal abuse, they claimed, and cruelty at one of the largest duck farms in California. As French says,

“Authorities reportedly responded to the video — by investigating the farm.”

We’re also told that the very next year in 2015 the same group released another undercover video, this time, in the words of the organization, “exposing ‘apparent mistreatment of chickens at a Foster Farms poultry slaughterhouse in Fresno and at three poultry farms in Fresno County.’”

French says,

“Once again, authorities responded — once again by investigating the farm.”

You will note that in both of those cases the state of California investigated the source of the scandal, at least the alleged source of the scandal, and they did not bring criminal charges against those who surreptitiously and secretly videoed the evidence, including conversations. As David French wrote yesterday,

“But the lives and deaths of chickens and ducks rate higher than the lives and deaths of human babies in the womb, so the Center for Medical Progress triggered an entirely different law-enforcement reaction. Pro-life journalists must be prosecuted.”

In the conclusion of his article, French writes,

“Fairness and law notwithstanding, Daleiden is clearly in for the fight of his legal life. California’s entire political establishment is growing ever-more repressive against people of faith and the pro-life movement. In close cases it may be difficult to find a sympathetic judge. Even here, with solid precedent on Daleiden’s side and a First Amendment that should tip the scales in his favor even further, progressive judges may be tempted to punish Planned Parenthood’s worst journalistic enemy.”

That’s all troubling enough, but before we leave this story, we need to recognize that yesterday the Washington Times broke a story on yet another video released by the Center for Medical Progress. This time, as Bradford Richardson reports, the activists released a video “showing a former Planned Parenthood official suggesting that babies born alive after abortions are sometimes left to die.”

Actually a transcript of the video demonstrates that it reveals, horrifyingly enough, even more. As the Times reports,

“DeShawn Taylor, former medical director for Planned Parenthood Arizona, appears in the video. ‘In Arizona, if the fetus comes out with any signs of life, we’re supposed to transport it. To the hospital,’ Ms. Taylor says.”

Next, we are told that the activists posing as fetal tissue buyers ask this former Planned Parenthood official if there is “any standard procedure for verifying signs of life.”

She responded,

“Well, the thing is, I mean the key is, you need to pay attention to who’s in the room, right?”

Later in the video, speaking of the same process of removing organs and tissues from aborted babies for use in medical experimentation, this former Planned Parenthood official indicated that when she was working for the organization there were moments of awkwardness. She said,

“It’s not a matter of how I feel about it coming out intact, but I gotta worry about my staff and people’s feelings about it coming out looking like a baby.”

Just consider those last words with all of their horror. She speaks about a baby “coming out looking like a baby.”

That tells us just about everything. This tells us that in this context, the moral status of the baby as to whether or not it’s a human life is really not even a consideration. Instead the only consideration is the staff and the emotional response that might be produced if indeed the aborted baby looks like a baby. It’s hard to look at this issue without coming to open grief. But it’s not only grief that should be our response, but moral outrage. And furthermore, there should be moral outrage at the fact that the Attorney General of California has arrested these two pro-life activists and charged them, once again with 15 felony counts.

Even if these prosecutions do not go far and even if, as we should hope and pray, these activists are acquitted, the reality is that California is undeniably guilty of selective enforcement in this case selective arrest. It is using a law against these two activists that is not used against others in a similar situation. It is also, that is the state of California, trying to deny the status of these individuals as journalists, therefore, trying to remove any First Amendment protections. But we’re also looking at the absolute fanaticism that is reflected here. Former California Attorney General Kamala Harris, now a United States senator, began this investigation. Once it was begun, there was no question of where it was going to end. The only question was when. And now we know the answer to that. The answer was yesterday, but now for these two and for the larger pro-life movement, at least in the state of California, the trial is only just beginning.