Senate Faces Trust Breakdown Over Abortion

“Abortion politics — and an emerging trust gap between Democrats and Republicans — threatened to derail the ostensibly noncontroversial human trafficking bill on the Senate floor Tuesday,” Roll Call reports.

“Democrats said they were effectively hoodwinked by Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas and other Republican senators with the inclusion of an expansion of the scope of the prohibition of federal funding on abortion known as the Hyde amendment. A Cornyn aide alleged that the staff of Judiciary ranking member Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) was aware of the abortion language before the bill even came up for a vote in committee, but Democratic aides said that simply was not true.”