“We were called upon to investigate allegations of criminal conduct by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast,” Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson, a Republican, said in a statement. “As I stated at the outset of this investigation, we must go where the evidence leads us. All the evidence uncovered in the course of this investigation was presented to the grand jury. I respect their decision on this difficult case.”

Conservatives are already reacting with dismay and shock at the indictments. But as I wrote when the first video was published, it was most effective as agitprop—playing to people’s visceral disgust with abortion. The image of Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s senior director of medical services, discussing organ harvesting cavalierly over lunch was off-putting, even to abortion supporters. But the case that Planned Parenthood had actually broken any laws was tenuous. Nucatola noted, for example, that the law prohibited trafficking of organs: “This is not—nobody should be ‘selling’ tissue.”

Planned Parenthood immediately cried foul on the videos. It alleged that the clips were misleadingly edited—a charge the Center for Medical Progress cleverly defused by posting the full raw footage. But Planned Parenthood also accused the activists of using fake government IDs, creating a fake organization, and inappropriately recording people without their consent as part of the sting. Anderson has not revealed the specifics of the indictment, but it appears that the grand jury believed Daleiden and Merritt committed some violation of laws involving government documents.

A grand-jury indictment is not the same as a criminal conviction. The burden of proof is much lower, and grand juries are generally willing to indict, although the switch from investigating Planned Parenthood to indicting the CMP workers came as a surprise. Planned Parenthood also isn’t totally off the hook. While the grand jury cleared the organization, Texas’s attorney general and the state’s Health and Human Services Commission are still investigating the group.