Democrats Fighting over Abortion Cut in a Pending Senate Bill

The Senate minority leader Harry Reid of the state of Nevada is facing an unlikely opponent over the abortion issue: his colleague and friend House Minority Leader from California, Nancy Pelosi. Their abortion entanglement threatens to hold up an important bill in The United States Senate over human trafficking.

Pelosi worked on a compromise this week with House Speaker John Boehner to head off major cuts in payments to Medicare physicians. Congress has struggled for years for a solution to control the reimbursement rates, and members in both the Democratic and Republican Parties backed the plan.

Senator Reid, however, who is strongly pro life, believes that some of the language in that bill would allow taxpayer money to be spent on abortion. This is also linked to the human sex trafficking bill.

Congress regularly approves language prohibiting the use of any taxpayer money for abortions in what is known as The Hyde amendment. When debating Obamacare in 2009, Democrats agreed to include the Hyde language. President Barack Obama also issued a separate executive order restating that federal money for community health care centers could not be used for abortion services. This has been a clear agreement between the two parties for a long time.

Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson said in a statement “In the Senate we are watching Republicans try to expand Hyde on a completely unrelated trafficking bill.” He also added “Republicans’ efforts to pick an abortion fight on the trafficking bill in addition to their efforts to add unnecessary Hyde language to the emerging doc fix compromise has Senator Reid concerned that Republicans are trying to slowly but systematically expand the scope of Hyde.”

This is a very unique position for Republicans, Reid and Pelosi to be in. However the fate of this all important human trafficking bill rests on them being able to agree.