Are sex trafficking victims also rape victims?
That’s a key policy question at the heart of a battle over an anti-human trafficking bill that Senate Democrats blocked Tuesday over objections to how it deals with abortion.
Like many fights over reproductive issues, the contours of what exactly lawmakers are contesting are murky, as Democrats accuse Republicans of harming women while Republicans argue the bill merely includes abortion language Congress has agreed to for decades.
The bill would create a fund for trafficking victims, paid for with fines paid by perpetrators of such crimes. Democrats abruptly flipped positions on it last week, saying they suddenly realized it limits the fund from being used for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is at stake — the longstanding Hyde Amendment language that’s been added to spending bills for decades.
One of those exemptions — the rape exemption — could apply to sex trafficking victims, although the measure doesn’t explicitly say it does. Republicans and conservatives say that’s sufficient; Democrats and liberals say it’s not.
“The reality is human trafficking victims aren’t automatically considered rape victims,” said Amy Friedrich-Karnik, federal policy adviser at the Center for Reproductive Rights, who says the language creates “unnecessary hurdles” for women desiring an abortion.
Democratic aides argued that this specific measure doesn’t define commercial sex as rape, and federal criminal law doesn’t define sex trafficking as rape, either — meaning it’s not guaranteed that a pregnant trafficking victim could use their restitution funds to obtain an abortion.
But liberals’ opposition to the language underscores their dislike of the Hyde Amendment limits in general. They contend that in many cases, women who qualify for those exemptions and get an abortion never get reimbursed by Medicaid, since states vary in the evidence they require.
Yet for decades, Democrats who support abortion rights have agreed to those limits, which block federal funds from being used for the controversial procedure except in the direst of circumstances.
“This isn’t about the Hyde exceptions,” said David Christensen, vice president of government affairs for the Family Research Council. “This is about them expanding coverage for elective abortions.”
And the bill also applies to victims who are trafficked for nonsexual labor. Conservatives say that removing the language would allow those victims to use the funds for abortions, even if their pregnancies haven’t come about as a result of rape.
The issue came to a head this week, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday that he might not hold a vote on the confirmation of attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch until the conflict is resolved.
The bill “has now become stuck because, apparently, [Democrats] finally read the bill and found in it the so-called Hyde language, which as all of you certainly know, has been almost boilerplate in laws for 40 years, and they’ve suddenly decided it shouldn’t be in this particular measure,” McConnell said.
