Leaders from the nation’s pro-life organizations are calling for the resignation of Kamala Harris, the California attorney general who has received thousands of dollars in contributions to her political campaign from Planned Parenthood while her office has also just seized the property of pro-life investigative journalist David Daleiden.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, said in a statement:
California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who sent agents to raid the home of a citizen journalist who exposed Planned Parenthood’s practices of harvesting and selling the body parts of aborted babies, is using her Senate campaign website to advocate for the abortion giant, promoting a petition to defend Planned Parenthood. Ms. Harris is engaging in exceptionally corrupt behavior, using her office as AG to aide a staunch supporter of her campaign. This is exactly the kind of puppeteer and blatant of conflict of interest that the American public is sick and tired of. Ms. Harris should immediately resign her position as the California Attorney General.
Harris is currently a candidate for the U.S. Senate, running to fill the seat of the retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Her campaign website features a petition asking voters to support and protect Planned Parenthood’s federal funding. Harris received $15,000 from Planned Parenthood during her re-election campaign in 2014.
The pro-life Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) also called on Harris to resign her position as state attorney general and end her Senate bid due to conflict of interest and abuse of power. The group’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, said:
In her zeal to succeed longtime abortion advocate Senator Barbara Boxer, California Attorney General and U.S. Senate Candidate Kamala Harris this week leaped across the line between her duties as Attorney General to uphold the rule of law and the public trust and her political interests in running for elected office. The fact that Ms. Harris is seizing private property of a pro-life California activist who has exposed horrific practices conducted by Planned Parenthood, which donated thousands to her last campaign, while her Senate campaign promotes and defends them – the nation’s largest abortion provider – is a conflict of interest and abuse of government power.
In her current role as California’s attorney general, Harris has been investigating Center for Medical Progress’ Daleiden for months in the wake of his series of videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s apparent practices of selling the body parts of aborted babies on the open market and altering the position of babies during abortion in order to harvest the most intact body parts. On Tuesday, Harris’s office conducted a raid of Daleiden’s apartment.
“To use the heavy hand of her office for personal political gain in a Senate campaign is the epitome of conflict of interest and abuse of power,” Dannenfelser added. “Ms. Harris should resign from her Attorney General post and end her bid for the U.S. Senate. She has abused her government office and no longer deserves the public trust.”
Similarly, Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, said in a statement:
Kamala Harris is engaged in the highest level of corruption and abuse of power. While she uses her KGB-like tactics to seize personal property of an innocent American citizen, she’s simultaneously running for U.S. Senate and using her campaign web site to promote and defend Planned Parenthood and its atrocious practice of harvesting, trafficking and selling baby parts. She is abusing her power as Attorney General for political gain in her Senate race and doing the bidding of Planned Parenthood – a taxpayer-funded organization that has contributed to her campaigns in the past. This outrageous abuse of power makes her unworthy to maintain the people’s trust, she should resign her office and end her Senate campaign immediately. The American people and the citizens of California have had enough of corrupt politicians who abuse their power for political gain.
Thomas More Society attorneys are defending Daleiden after Harris’ office seized his computer, hard drives, cell phone, and other personal property in the raid, reports Christian Newswire.
“Harris’ campaign site makes it clear that the state’s top law enforcer is a political ally of Planned Parenthood,” said Matt Heffron, a former federal prosecutor and Thomas More Society special counsel on Daleiden’s defense team.
“To storm into a private citizen’s home with a search warrant is outrageously out of proportion for the type of crime alleged,” he asserted. “It’s a discredit to law enforcement and an oppressive abuse of government power. Not only does the raid and seizure upon Daleiden appear to be politically motivated, it is apparently seeking grounds for bringing new California criminal charges.”
Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of Thomas More Society, said:
These latest draconian acts on the part of law enforcement are apparently directed by Harris who is running to replace abortion rights advocate Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate. They were likely provoked by a recent op-ed piece in the L.A. Times criticizing Harris for failing to keep pace with the Houston prosecutor who worked with Planned Parenthood’s lawyer to get a grand jury to return criminal indictments against Daleiden and his colleague Sandra Merritt.
An LA Times column by Robin Abcarian on March 25 criticized Harris for dragging her feet on Daleiden’s case.
She wrote:
It took a Texas grand jury only two months to reject claims that Planned Parenthood had illegally trafficked in fetal tissue, and instead indict two antiabortion activists whose elaborate plans blew up in their faces. That was some swift poetic justice.
But what’s taking California so long?
In July, our politically ambitious attorney general, Kamala Harris, vowed to “carefully review” the “Center for Medical Progress.”
However, other abortion rights advocates disagree with the Texas indictment of Daleiden and his colleague.
Two pro-choice law professors wrote the indictment of Daleiden and Merritt – instead of Planned Parenthood – amounted to “a stunning act of legal jujitsu” and was a “deeply disturbing” outcome both for the First Amendment and undercover citizen journalists attempting to expose corruption.
The indictment itself by a grand jury convened by Harris County, Texas District Attorney Devon Anderson is under suspicion of bias. Live Action News reported that the Harris County grand jury did not even vote on Planned Parenthood’s case. One of Anderson’s top campaign contributors was discovered to be the attorney of Douglas Karpen, one of the most notorious late-term abortionists in the nation.
“After five months of silence from the California Attorney General’s office, this search warrant makes a criminal investigation look like nothing more than an extravagantly political move,” Heffron said. “To initiate criminal proceedings in the midst of civil suits is an irregular use of taxpayer money.”
Harris’ office did not respond to Breitbart News’ request for comment on the calls for her resignation.
Though Planned Parenthood and its supporters have denied any wrongdoing in its sale of body parts, the abortion business also released a statement in October announcing it will no longer accept payments for aborted fetal tissue. The organization and its leftwing media supporters continue to insist the videos, produced by CMP, were “deceptively edited.”
However, a Democrat opposition research firm named Fusion – hired by Planned Parenthood itself to review the videos – said while their analysts observed the videos had been edited, “the analysis did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation.”
Additionally, Fusion noted, “[A]nalysts found no evidence that CMP inserted dialogue not spoken by Planned Parenthood staff.”
An analysis by Coalfire, a third-party forensics company hired by Alliance Defending Freedom, found that the videos were “not manipulated” and that they are “authentic.”
The co-dependent relationship between the abortion industry and the Democrat Party has been extensively documented.
Planned Parenthood and much of the larger abortion lobby have endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton – who recently said that unborn children have no constitutional rights. As the Washington Free Beacon reports, Clinton has “paid Planned Parenthood thousands of dollars using campaign funds.”
Four separate payments from Clinton’s campaign were received by the nation’s top abortion business as “reimbursements for ‘staff time’” for get out the vote efforts against rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
And the feeling is apparently mutual. The report states:
Clinton received financial support from the organization, collecting more than $20,000 from executives and employees of the national organization and its regional affiliates—20 times more money than the rest of the presidential field combined.
Recently, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) vetoed his legislature’s bill to redirect Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood facilities in his state to other healthcare centers that do not provide abortions.
“We’re here today to smack down the latest attack on women’s health care rights,” McAuliffe said. “I am very proud of my strong record on reproductive rights, and let me tell you this, I am very proud to veto this particular piece of legislation.”
As reported by the Virginia Bureau of Watchdog.org, Planned Parenthood contributed more than $1.7 million to McAuliffe’s gubernatorial campaign in 2013. Abortion industry lobbying organization NARAL donated $56,000 to his campaign as well.
“We now know how much money it costs to purchase a veto from Terry McAuliffe – right around $2 million in campaign contributions,” Victoria Cobb, president of The Family Foundation of Virginia, said.
In addition, the House Select Panel that is investigating Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue practices has six strongly pro-abortion Democrat members – all of whose campaigns have received donations from the abortion business.