David Daleiden was smiling on the morning he turned himself in at the Harris County criminal courthouse in Houston, Texas. Sporting a skinny tie, his hair slicked back in a faux-hawk, the 27-year-old thanked his supporters in the anti-abortion movement. He vowed to continue his three-year secret-video crusade against Planned Parenthood, which Daleiden maintains is illegally trafficking in fetal tissue.

But it has been a stunning reversal of fortune for Daleiden, the toast of the Republican presidential candidates and the bane of abortion providers’ existences, and that sea change goes beyond the Texas courthouse. A grand jury that was supposed to be investigating Planned Parenthood over the content of Daleiden’s videos – at the request of Texas’s fervently anti-abortion lieutenant governor – instead indicted Daleiden and an associate on felony charges. Having turned down a plea deal that would keep him out of prison, Daleiden could serve up to 20 years. He faces a raft of civil suits, including accusations of racketeering by Planned Parenthood. Twelve states that have investigated Planned Parenthood have cleared the organization of wrongdoing. And he didn’t know it yet, but another setback for Daleiden was about to come.

“They are sending a message that the state of Texas right now is open for business in baby body parts,” Daleiden said last Thursday morning. He was referring to a state that has gone further than any other to restrict abortion and shut down Planned Parenthood.

Daleiden calls himself a citizen journalist, and his attorneys have claimed that creating a fake tissue procurement company and misrepresenting himself to secretly record abortion providers falls within the bounds of journalistic techniques.