An important fight over the Hyde Amendment, an historically-uncontroversial stipulation that taxpayer money will not fund abortion, has broken out in the Senate with little warning.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and Senate Democrats unexpectedly filibustered a human trafficking bill that passed unanimously out of the Judiciary Committee earlier this year, claiming they didn’t know that Republicans had put Hyde Amendment language in the legislation.

“This bill will not come off this floor as long as that language is in the bill,” Reid, who said in 2009 that his “belief in the sanctity of life is why I have repeatedly voted against using taxpayer money for abortions,” told reporters. Reid seems to define taxpayer money as only that money collected by the IRS from Americans. The human trafficking bill creates a fund for victims that is paid for by fines, so Reid says that it’s a new precedent to apply Hyde Amendment language to such a bill (as if a government of, by, and for the people can have money that isn’t taxpayer money).

If Republicans pull strip out the language, they risk setting a new political precedent that Hyde Amendment language is too controversial to defend. “If you give it up here, I don’t understand why you would be able to continue to win this fight on appropriations bills,” as one GOP Senate aide tells National Review.

McConnell understands that and he using President Obama’s desire for a new attorney general as leverage, saying that the Senate won’t vote to confirm Loretta Lynch as Eric Holder’s successor until they pass the human trafficking bill with the Hyde Amendment language.

That has political risks that McConnell has hoped to avoid; the Congressional Black Caucus is rallying activists to pressure him to hold the Lynch vote, with CBC chair G.K. Butterfield attributing the delay in her confirmation to racism. The alternative —a Democratic victory on the Senate floor — would represent a major defeat for the pro-life movement and embolden Reid in trying to dominate the Senate from the position of the minority.

You can read more about the fight in my article on the home page.