It seems you don’t have to shoot the messenger any more, just get a Texas grand jury to forget about that ham sandwich and indict the messenger, in this case David Daleiden, director of the Center for Medical Progress, and another pro-life activist, Sandra S. Merritt, for their videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s booming business of selling the body parts of aborted babies for cash. As the New York Times reported:

Prosecutors in Harris County said one of the leaders of the Center for Medical Progress -- an anti-abortion group that made secretly recorded videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials trying to illegally profit from the sale of fetal tissue -- had been indicted on a charge of tampering with a governmental record, a felony, and on a misdemeanor charge related to purchasing human organs….

The record-tampering charges accused Mr. Daleiden and Ms. Merritt of making and presenting fake California driver’s licenses, with the intent to defraud, for their April meeting at Planned Parenthood in Houston.  

What used to be called “investigative journalism” has been criminalized. Planned Parenthood was not indicted for selling baby body parts but in the parallel universe of this grand jury the filmmakers were indicted for engaging in an alleged criminal conspiracy to buy them. How can you buy something the other party is not selling? If Planned Parenthood was not in fact selling body parts, then why the extended negotiations? Why didn’t Planned Parenthood tell the filmmakers to get lost instead of inviting them to lunch and negotiating prices over a salad and cocktails?

Interestingly, and strictly coincidentally, of course, a prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney’s office is a Planned Parenthood board member. As LifeNews.com reports:

Lauren Reeder is a prosecutor in the Harris County District Attorney’s criminal family law division. She apparently notified District Attorney Devon Anderson of her role with Planned Parenthood last week. Reeder is listed as a non-compensated “Director” on the 990 Tax Form for 2014 filed by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.

Planned Parenthood and its supporters got caught with their forceps down, so anything they can do to cloud the issue and cast doubt on the integrity of their accusers is in their interest and in the interest of the presidential candidate who applauds their efforts, one Hillary Clinton, well-known for blaming things like Benghazi on inflammatory videos.

Planned Parenthood has already tried to discredit the videos by saying they were carefully edited and that the admissions of Planned Parenthood officials of conducting a for-profit baby body part flea market was taken out of context. It is hard to imagine in what “context” the discussion of the price of a fetal head versus the price of a new Lamborghini is okay. As LifeNews.com comments:

The video of the Houston Planned Parenthood makes it appear the Planned Parenthood abortion business may be selling the “fully intact” bodies of unborn babies purposefully born alive and left to die. The video shows the Director of Research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, Melissa Farrell, advertising the Texas Planned Parenthood branch’s track record of fetal tissue sales, including its ability to deliver fully intact aborted babies….

Planned Parenthood could be breaking the federal law known as the Born Alive Infants Protection Act that requires abortion clinics, hospitals and other places that do abortions to provide appropriate medical care for a baby born alive after a failed abortion or purposefully birthed to “let die.” That would be one of the potential ways Planned Parenthood could produce a “fully intact” baby to sell to StemExpress for research. Most “crunchy” abortion methods would do damage to the baby’s body.

But it is not Farrell or her associates that have been indicted. If Kermit Gosnell and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger had a love child, it might be Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director of Medical Services, who, in one of the undercover videos, appears to be calmly brokering the sale of body parts as if she were negotiating over lawn furniture at a garage sale.

In one disturbing video and its appalling transcript, made by the non-profit group Center for Medical Progress, which describes itself as “dedicated to monitoring and reporting on medical ethics and advances”, it is made clear that the alleged noble crusade against unwanted children is a fraud, and that Planned Parenthood’s interest in abortion is a financial one and that human life is just a commodity to be bought and sold on the open market.

The video shows Nucatola negotiating with two actors posing as agents of a fetal tissue procurement company and discussing the body parts of aborted babies as if shw was a butcher at the local meat market, as Breitbart.com reports:

“We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part,” Nucatola coldly explains. “I’m gonna basically crush [the unborn child] below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact. … And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps.”

Nucatola also goes into great detail to explain how Planned Parenthood is able to use its loose affiliates as a way to protect the parent company from potential legal fallout.

The video goes a long way to explain Planned Parenthood’s eternal devotion to legalizing late-term and partial-birth abortion.

Nucatola explains to the undercover reporters that the butchered body parts (hearts, livers, “lower extremities -- probably for the muscle”) sell for $30 to $100 apiece.

Moreover, the more fully-formed the baby body parts, the more valuable those parts are.

It is hard to see how this was taken out of context or that exposing this criminal activity is itself a crime. Yet this is the fundamentally transformed America we live in, one in which babies can be sliced and diced for profit but it is those that document this activity are guilty of the greater sin.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.