Today, California governor Jerry Brown announced that he had signed Assembly Bill 1671, a measure criminalizing many forms of whistleblowing in the health-care industry. The law makes it an alternate felony-misdemeanor offense to intentionally distribute, or to aid and abet the distribution of, a confidential communication with a health-care provider that was obtained unlawfully. As I reported previously at National Review Online, the bill was drafted with the assistance of Planned Parenthood in order to intimidate potential whistleblowers such as David Daleiden and his group, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), which was responsible for a series of videos in summer 2015 depicting evidence of the abortion giant’s engagement in illegal fetal-tissue trafficking. Just this week, a series of emails were accessed via a Public Records Act request, revealing that the office of California attorney general Kamala Harris collaborated with Planned Parenthood’s California affiliate to draft AB 1761. The emails show several drafts of the bill being sent from Beth Parker, chief legal counsel for California Planned Parenthood, and Jill Habig, who was serving as special counsel to Harris at the time. – READ MORE
