A Texas grand jury has cleared Planned Parenthood of misconduct after the abortion provider was accused of selling foetal body parts for profit.<\/p>\n
Instead, the panel charged the film-makers behind the accusations with tampering with government records.<\/p>\n
The Center for Medical Progress (CMP) secretly filmed videos that set off an effort to withdraw the Planned Parenthood’s federal funding.<\/p>\n
CMP founder David Daleiden was also charged with buying human organs.<\/p>\n
“We were called upon to investigate allegations of criminal conduct by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast,” said Devon Anderson, the prosecutor who is now in charge of the case.<\/p>\n
“As I stated at the outset of this investigation, we must go where the evidence leads us.”<\/p>\n
Planned Parenthood is a non-profit group that provides reproductive health services to mostly lower-income Americans. Some of its locations perform abortions.<\/p>\n
Mr Daleiden and members of the Center for Medical Progress posed as medical researchers and discussed buying foetal tissue from Planned Parenthood staff.<\/p>\n
Critics said the videos were heavily edited in an effort to discredit Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n
Planned Parenthood said it charged small fees to process the foetal tissue donations and did not profit from the exchanges. The group has since stopped charging the processing fees.<\/p>\n
Republicans members of Congress pointed to the videos as they sought to ban federal funding for Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n
Democrats have stopped those efforts and President Barack Obama has promised to veto any bill that stripped the healthcare provider of funding.<\/p>\n
Eleven states – including Texas – launched investigations after the release of the videos.<\/p>\n
Nine have determined Planned Parenthood did nothing wrong. The inquiries have yet to finish in Arizona and Louisiana.
\n–
\nBy: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Texas grand jury has cleared Planned Parenthood of misconduct after the abortion provider was accused of selling foetal body parts for profit. Instead, the panel charged the film-makers behind the accusations with tampering with government records. The Center for Medical Progress (CMP) secretly filmed videos that set off an effort to withdraw the Planned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=184602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=184602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=184602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=184602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}