It took 11 months for an anti-abortion group to edit the secretly recorded Planned Parenthood videos

Anti-abortion protestors at a rally.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

A man named Ryan Gonzalez reportedly spent 11 months editing the secretly recorded Planned Parenthood video footage that was released by the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress, a source close to Gonzalez told The Huffington Post. The videos, which appear to show Planned Parenthood officials discussing the disposal of fetal tissue and whose content rallied Republicans to threaten to shut down the government, have since been found to have used actors and contain heavy edits that make them entirely unreliable.

The Huffington Post's source said that Gonzalez worked with his friend, David Daleiden, who started the Center for Medical Progress, in an apartment in Orange County, California. The pair began by meeting to edit the videos once or twice a week, then ramped up the frequency in May 2015 until it became a full-time effort. In July, Gonzalez promoted the videos on his personal Facebook page: "This is the first part of a project I've been editing since last August and haven't been able to talk about until now. It was just released today and the news is tracking well so far." The pair later made fun of allegations that the footage was manipulated on their Facebook pages.

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.