Pair who secretly filmed Planned Parenthood fight charges

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Planned Parenthood is making an unusual legal demand to join California’s criminal prosecution of two anti-abortion activists charged with invasion of privacy for secretly making videos as they tried to buy fetal material from the organization.

A judge in San Francisco will consider the issue Monday. Prosecutors also want to keep the names of 14 abortion-rights workers who appear in the 2015 videos confidential.

The California attorney general in 2017 charged David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress after Texas prosecutors dropped a similar case against them.

A grand jury in Texas declined to indict Planned Parenthood on the pair’s claims that Planned Parenthood illegally sells fetal tissue.

Daleiden and Merritt have pleaded not guilty and argue they are undercover journalists shielded from prosecution.