A Champion Prepares a Cultural Gamechanger

By Charlie Johnston

You have probably heard by now that the last remaining criminal charge against David Daleiden has been expunged and dismissed.

It began over 10 years ago when Harris County in Texas (Houston) convened a grand jury to investigate Planned Parenthood (PP) after the revelations Daleiden made in his undercover videos (most of which you can find under the menu on the right side of this site). Of course, as with progressives everywhere, the District Atty’s office transmogrified the investigation into Daleiden, instead. It all fell apart as evidence became compelling that PP had colluded with the DA’s office from the start to turn the investigation onto Daleiden and give PP a pass. It always amused me that as that came to its denouement, PP effectively tossed the DA’s office under the bus to save its own skin. The Asst. DA who presided over all this was fired and the DA lost her next election bid. PP effectively aborted their careers.

Less than a year later, then-California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris picked up the mantle of persecution, did an armed early morning raid on Daleiden’s apartment and, once again prosecuted the whistleblower instead of the evildoers he exposed. That’s over now – but it was a preview of the type of lawfare modern Democrats use to try to destroy their opponents. Though it was an ugly trial by fire, it did reveal details that have helped to bring PP and abortionists to their knees over the last decade. We needed a champion who would not buckle when PP, then the 2,000-lb. gorilla of politics, tried to bankrupt and destroy the life of its critics. We found one in David Daleiden.

What many people do not realize is that, over the last decade, there has not been just one case against Daleiden, but a whole bunch of them. PP and liberals deploy lawfare like drones. The criminal case was a big one, but the civil case heard in federal court before Judge William Orrick is the other big one. That was the case where Orrick suppressed many videos, making it a crime to even show them, so people could not see the facts. It also was the one where Daleiden was fined extravagantly. It is in the appeals process. During that period, I had linked to one of the proscribed videos at my site. Orrick showed how serious they were about taking this out of public view entirely when I got formal notice from the court that if I did not remove it, I would be held in contempt of court and potentially jailed. After a week’s thought, I found the same video in a publicly available Congressional file. I left it up, but changed the link to the Congressional copy. If Orrick were really to come after me, he would have to get into a battle with Congress. I never heard from the court again.

Orrick should have never presided over the case in the first place. When he was a private attorney, he funded getting a PP affiliate into their office building. His wife was prolific in her social media posts promoting abortion and demanding Daleiden’s head. But Orrick apparently thought he could become a hero to what he thought was the ascendant leftist command state – and they don’t need to follow no stinking laws, except those they make up to get their opponents.

Eventually, the US Congress released some of the videos that Orrick had proscribed into the public domain. Orrick could not do much because this was part of a Congressional investigation. He would have to venture deep into separation of powers territory to fight it. When Daleiden released some of these previously proscribed videos, the abortion industry filed suit accusing him of contempt of court. While I have no regard for Orrick, even he had better wit than the reflexively hyper-aggressive orcs in the top levels of the abortion industry. Orrick knew that making Daleiden the ONLY person who could not legally share information already in the public domain would only fast-track the inevitable unraveling of his trial to get Daleiden, so he ruled that David could share what everyone else in America already had full, public-domain access to.

As difficult as the trials have been – and continue to be – every time the abortionists get a little, flashy, transient victory, they get a little weaker. A decade ago they were the untouchable, 2,000-lb. gorilla that allies could always count on and the enemies dreaded tangling with. Now the abortionists are emaciated, wan, and weak. Even their allies don’t count on them anymore or so eagerly dance to their tune. The hyper-aggression of the abortion industry and their political allies was supposed to be the crowbar with which they would knock Daleiden out of the fight, to serve only as an object lesson to those who challenge PP and the abortion industry. Instead, it became the instrument with which they crippled themselves – because we found a champion who would not turn tail and run from the mighty power of PP and its political allies.

Just so you know though, the legal battle is nowhere near over. It progresses like a river of sludge through the federal court system. By the time it is over, I hope that PP has been banished from the face of the earth and we are at the beginning of the end of our cultural enthusiasm for making sacrifice of our children to Molech.

I am very excited about a project that Daleiden will unveil in the next three months. He’s been working on it for over a year – and I have probably been the biggest cheerleader for it.

I have long believed that vulnerable women are the satan’s primary target with abortion. Though the babies are physically killed, I believe they go immediately to heaven because of both the Baptism of Blood and the Baptism of Desire. (I’m not going to go into that here, but I vetted my logic with the premiere American Canon Lawyer of his generation – and he came to believe I had interpreted it rightly.) Abortion leaves behind a hole in women’s hearts that will not heal without God’s intervention. Some live lives of quiet desperation, never speaking of their existential despair to anyone. Others become inflamed advocates of abortion, desperately trying to convince themselves they are justified in the decision they once made that eats at them so relentlessly.

When I was doing a radio talk show in the Chicago area in the early ‘90s, abortion was one of my frequent topics. For a time, a peculiar phenomenon sprung up. I would get three or four calls a week off-air from women who had had an abortion and never told anyone about it, but felt like they could talk to me. They were all heartbroken, many thinking they could not possibly ever be forgiven. They told me stories of being young and scared and having parents or boyfriends pressuring them to “get rid of” the problem. Many of the calls were very memorable. One that stuck out was a woman who told me she had an abortion when she was 17. She had been assured it was just a clump of cells and not a baby at all, which helped calm her doubts about it. After the abortion she saw a tray with her dead, mutilated baby on it – NOT a clump of cells – and had known ever since that she had participated in an unspeakable sin and crime. She cried piteously. She had lived in quiet despair ever since that moment of betrayal.

Common to all the women was how compassionate and engaged the abortion providers were at soothing them and encouraging them along the way before the abortion – and the dead silence as those same women tried to get help dealing with the fallout afterwards. Abortion providers were like abusive men who gave smooth talk to get the women to do their will – and then abandoned them completely once their aim was accomplished. Abortion providers are predators – not just on the babies, but on the women who carry those babies.

For each of these women, I assured them that their child was in paradise, had a name, and that their baby prayed constantly that the mother might be reconciled so they could be joyfully reunited in heaven. I know it helped some, at least, because I helped arrange Sacramental Confession for several of them at their request. (Formerly, a Priest needed to obtain approval from his Bishop before he could offer absolution for abortion.) But it cemented in my mind the notion that sowing unshakeable despair in the surviving mothers in abortion was a key aim of the devil.

Prolonged cultural arguments tend to descend into ruts. If you want to change people’s hearts, you must effectively get them to see things from a new perspective. Daleiden did that with the release of the Planned Parenthood and NARAL undercover videos a decade ago. It’s ironic, because the execution of infants was always the primary evil, but the harvesting and illegal selling of baby body parts focused people’s attention on a barbarity they were not aware of – and caused many to think anew on the subject, even though it was only a subordinate evil to the casual execution. It paved the way for the shuttering of many abortion clinics, putting the industry back on its heels, and (I believe) to the reversal of Roe v Wade entirely.

 Young women are being preyed on by the abortion industry. At a terribly vulnerable time, when they are usually terrified, abortion is being presented to them as an easy solution to a terribly difficult problem. They only find out that it is a “solution” that cripples them later. Abortionists offer an easy solution and give women a hole in the heart that will not heal.

I have long wanted something that would bring into sharp focus that abortion does not just prey on children, but on the mothers it targets.

Daleiden has spent the last year working on and producing a documentary that brings this sharply into focus. I have seen the rough cut – and it is even more powerful than I had hoped. It would be improper for me to go into anything more specific about the project than this right now. Be prepared, though. I will advise you when I can. I think it is a huge gamechanger.

The Planned Parenthood – NARAL undercover videos undercut the legal and political invulnerability of abortionists – because David Daleiden is a champion who did not run from the field when abortionists and their fellow travelers in high office launched their lawfare to destroy him. This documentary is the first shot in destroying the cultural zeitgeist that makes abortion accepted in the first place. For the first time in my life, I can see a future in which people – including young, vulnerable women – recoil at the very idea of abortion. Pray for this project – and for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart and an era of true peace and brotherhood.

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

Find me on X at @JohnstonPilgrim

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