“Shut the door,” Sen. Charles Schumer of New York ordered an aid when a reporter asked him if he had seen any of the videos that revealed gruesome details of Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in human fetuses.
It was one of several negative answers Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack received when surveying Senate Democrats emerging from a failed attempt to ban federal funding of the giant abortion provider.
Senate Democrats blocked a bill on Monday night to defund Planned Parenthood without having watched the undercover videos documenting the organization’s involvment in harvesting aborted baby organs and selling them to biotech companies, McCormack asserted.
"I have not seen them," Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire told me after the vote.
"I’m sorry, what’s your name?" asked Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii in response to a simple yes-or-no question. "Can you call my comms director?"
"I have not seen them, no," Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania told me last week.
As Schumer stepped into a senators-only elevator, McCormack asked him the same yes-or-no question.
"Shut the door," Schumer told an aide.
Only one Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, said she had seen any of the videos, but said they miss the point.
“The point is to prevent abortions by making sure that women can get birth control," she said.
According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Planned Parenthood’s campaign spending in the 2014 elections included $4.2 million in outside spending—which it used nearly exclusively to support Democrats or oppose GOP candidates, the Associated Press reported.
And today we celebrate...