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Two Activists Who Secretly Recorded Planned Parenthood Face 15 Felony Charges (npr.org)
mi writes: California prosecutors on Tuesday charged two activists who made undercover videos of themselves interacting with officials of a taxpayer-supported organization with 15 felonies, saying they invaded privacy by filming without consent. State Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a longtime Congressional Democrat who took over the investigation in January, said in a statement that the state "will not tolerate the criminal recording of conversations." Didn't we just determine that filming officials is not merely a right, but a First Amendment right? The "taxpayer-supported organization" is Planned Parenthood, and the charges were pressed against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. Daleiden has called the charges "bogus," claiming that Planned Parenthood "has violated the law by selling fetal tissue -- an allegation that has been investigated by more than a dozen states, none of which found evidence supporting Daleiden's claim," reports NPR. "Daleiden claimed the video showed evidence that Planned Parenthood was selling that tissue, which would be illegal. Planned Parenthood said the footage was misleadingly edited and that the organization donates tissue following legal guidelines and with permitted reimbursements for expenses, which investigations have corroborated."
I'd like to point out that not everyone charged is convicted either.. But I'd like to also ask the following:
What is a journalist? If there is an exception for being a journalist, then they are going to get off because they where acting like journalists doing an investigative report on PP, which they released to the public and it became news. Sure seems like a good basis for the "We are journalists" claim to come.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I'm not a Christian and I don't define life as starting at the instant of fertilization, but doesn't life start at some time that has to be specified by law, a definition that is meaningful in cases like the murder of a pregnant woman? Since have put a lot of effort into legally defining death as cessation of brain activity, why not use the start of brain activity as the definition of humanity in secular law?
I absolutely do not understand this OBSESSION with fetuses, [...]
Sure, let me help you out.
Before the late 1970s, the obsession with fetuses was an entirely Roman Catholic thing. At the time of Roe v Wade, most evangelical Protestants in the US were fine with legal access to abortion at least for health reasons.
In the fallout from Watergate, conservatives got into bed with fundamentalists, taking over both the Republican Party and the evangelical church. The previous wedge issue, segregation, was no longer viable, so to get Catholics onside, abortion was chosen as the new wedge issue.
This is all quite recent history. The "traditional doctrine" that fetuses have the same moral value as a child is younger than the Happy Meal.
If this is news to you, look at what's now happening with contraception. In 20 years time, people may find it hard to believe that most American evangelical Protestants were fine with contraception at the turn of the 21st century.
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There is a subtle detail being missed here. The murder of a pregnant woman is certainly not at the woman's consent. That's the difference. An abortion is the woman's choice. A murder is not. Glad I could clear that up for you.
You completely missed his point, so hard in fact I suspect it was a deliberate choice to misunderstand what he was saying. What he was saying was that a fetus, unborn child, or hell, a fully born child (or adult), must be legally and/or morally recognized as a human by some definition as some point in time, and at that point it should be afforded legal protection as a human being. In point of fact, under federal law, an unborn child is recognized as a human if it is the victim of a violent crime. "The woman's choice" is completely irrelevant to the question, for the same reason a woman can't simply choose to kill a 6 month old, because everyone recognizes that a 6 month old is a human person, and one person cannot choose to kill another just because they feel like it.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Although that's close to the right question, I think it need a bit of adjustment. Firstly, insert "a", as in "At what point is it 'a human'?" The unfertilised egg is arguably already 'human'--it's human tissue--but not a human. Secondly, possibly further change "a human" to "a person". If we're thinking of "a human" as an animal, i.e. as a body, that's the wrong approach. We can quite happily talk about multi-headed animals, e.g. Cerberus the three-headed dog, but we'd never talk about "multi-headed people". We'd talk about conjoint twins. Reposting something I posted elsewhere:
I think it's a mind, not a body, that defines a person. One body is usually associated with one mind. However if we think about (or postulate) cases where this isn't the case, I think it becomes obvious that it's the mind that's important, and the body is just a vessel.
e.g. We think of Conjoint/Siamese twins as twins, two people, not one person, because there are two minds, despite there being only one body. If a person is decapitated, they are dead and gone, regardless of whether their body could be kept on life support, because it is the mind that is important not the body, and the mind is gone. Considering the hypothetical situation in "body swap" stories like Freaky Friday, we would say that the people are in different bodies, not that the people have different minds in them, because it is the mind, not the body, that defines the person.
There can't be a mind until after 20 weeks gestation (18 weeks after fertilisation), because connections don't begin to form in the cerebral cortex until then, so until then there is just an empty vessel, IMHO.
but what law or constitutional clause grants a "right to not be recorded"?
It's covered under a general "right to privacy" that arises from precedents and "common law". It is not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, so it is not a "right" in that sense.
At the same time there is no enumerated "right to record private conversations without consent" in the Constitution, so laws against doing that are not forbidden. That could brush up against freedom of the press in the First amendment, depending on the circumstances of the recordings.
Where I live, there are laws covering this under various contexts and circumstances - for example, any one of multiple parties to a conversation can record it without the others' knowledge or permission
In the US, it mostly varies state-by-state. What you describe is called "one-party consent", which is sufficient in some states. California is not one of them, and the videos were recorded in California. California requires the consent of all parties to a private conversation, and it is common practice to announce that everyone is being recorded at the beginning of the conversation to document that consent has been given.
It should also be noted that video and audio recording often have different laws.
Is it that an otherwise private entity like PP that receives tax/public funds suddenly becomes a government agency
No.
and therefore subject to the 4th amendment?
The 4th amendment prevents the government from searching and seizing property without due process (warrant, court order, etc). It's not applicable.
The 1st amendment includes "freedom of the press", which restricts the government from hampering the efforts of journalists. But PP isn't the government. Nor is PP bringing these charges, the state of California is. And California can bring charges whether or not PP wants them to do so.
The defendants are going to attempt to claim they were acting as journalists and thus shielded by the First amendment. The fact that they edited the recordings to completely change the context is not going to help that claim.