Another major pro-abortion group has filed a lawsuit in federal court attempting to block the release of anti-abortion videos created by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP).
The National Abortion Federation (NAF), which represents abortion providers across the U.S. as well as in Canada and Australia, says CMP’s videos must be blocked because they represent an imminent safety threat to the group’s members.
“The situation could not be more urgent,” the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, says. “Absent immediate injunctive relief … Defendants’ conduct will cause irreversible harm to NAF, its employees’, and NAF members’ safety, security, privacy, and reputations.”
NAF’s statement accompanying the suit accuse CMP’s operators of engaging in “a long-running illegal conspiracy” to gain entry to closed NAF meetings where they were able to secretly record footage of officials discussing sensitive topics. (RELATED: Fetus Parts Purchaser Changes Its Website Following Video)
“They set up a fake company and sent fake employees of that company with fake identities to misrepresent themselves and gain access to NAF’s annual meetings and member facilities that provide abortion care,” the statement says. “They signed agreements with NAF that prohibited the activities they have engaged in, obviously with no intention of honoring those agreements.”
The new lawsuit comes shortly after StemExpress, a company which processes fetal tissue, won a temporary restraining order against CMP regarding video footage from a lunch meeting last May. (RELATED: Fetal Tissue Company Tries To Halt New Planned Parenthood Videos)
NAF’s suit does a great deal to emphasize the alleged threat of physical violence that NAF abortion providers constantly live under.
“For more than the last 30 years, anti-abortion extremists have perpetrated tens of thousands of acts of violence and other criminal activities against NAF members and other abortion providers, including murder, shootings, arson, bombings, chemical and acid attacks, anthrax and bioterrorism threats, kidnapping, death threats, and other forms of violence,” the suit says. If CMP releases videos featuring NAF members, the suit argues, it will encourage more such violence against them due to the videos being “highly edited” in a manner that “demonizes” abortion providers.
CMP, for its part, has repeatedly insisted that all of its undercover operations remained within the letter of the law. A statement from the organization on the new lawsuit was not immediately available, as CMP’s website is temporary down.
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