Some Bad News For Those Antiabortion Guys Who Targeted Planned Parenthood

David Daleiden as he arrives at a Texas courthouse to face similar charges in February 2016.

California just became the only state out of the 13 states that investigated to charge two antiabortion activists after they attempted to entrap Planned Parenthood employees across the country. Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced on March 28 that California would charge David Robert Daleiden and Sandra Merritt with 15 felonies for violating privacy laws.

In the Summer of 2015 Daleiden, 28, and Merritt, 63, released a series of infamous and now widely discredited videos that purported to reveal Planned Parenthood's sale of postabortion fetal tissue for research. Posing as facilitators for medicinal research companies, Daleiden and Merritt (working for an antiabortion nonprofit called Center For Medical Progress) secretly recorded Planned Parenthood employees across the country. The antiabortion activists used fake names and IDs to mislead the Planned Parenthood employees into discussing the possible sale of fetal tissue.

The most widely circulated video shows Daleiden and Merritt at Planned Parenthood's Gulf Coast facility in New Orleans ambiguously discussing tissue sale with Melissa Farrell, a research director. Following several investigations, Planned Parenthood maintained that it does not sell fetal tissue and was cleared of any wrongdoing; the videos had been heavily edited to portray the deceptive message. However, Merritt and Daleiden's videos still sparked a movement in favor of federally defunding Planned Parenthood.

California is a two-party consent state, meaning that if someone is recording a conversation, both parties must consent. Daleiden and Merritt were charged with invading the privacy of healthcare employees by recording their conversations in California without consent. The criminal complaint specifies that Daleiden and Merritt filmed people without permission between 2013 and 2015 in three California cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and El Dorado. Each person they recorded confidentially constitutes one felony charge. Both Daleiden and Merritt maintain that their conversations were not confidential.

"The right to privacy is a cornerstone of California's Constitution, and a right that is foundational in a free democratic society," Becerra said when announcing the indictments. "We will not tolerate the criminal recording of confidential conversations."