LOS ANGELES (AP) – Two anti-abortion activists who secretly recorded Planned Parenthood conversations about fetal tissue must each face more than a dozen felony charges.
California’s new Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed 15 counts apiece Tuesday against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center of Medical Progress, saying the videos showing discussions of fetal tissue were made without the consent of the people in them in violation of state law.
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.”
The charges come eight months after similar charges against the pair were dropped in Texas.
California prosecutors say Daleiden, of Davis, California, and Merritt, of San Jose, filmed 14 people without permission between October 2013 and July 2015 in Los Angeles, San Francisco and El Dorado counties. One felony count was filed for each person recorded. The 15th was for criminal conspiracy to invade privacy.