It is a measure of the effectiveness of the pro-life movement that life issues increasingly are co-mingled with other ones.

Right now, in the U.S. Senate, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (S. 178) is being held up for a second week because pro-aborts want to use it to undermine the Hyde Amendment—prohibiting federal funding of most abortions—which, you will recall, has passed both houses of Congress countless times over the past 30 years.

Democrats have finally admitted that staffers knew Hyde Amendment language was in the human trafficking bill even as they accused Republicans of having snuck it in before the bill reached the Senate floor. But still, they continue their filibuster.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is not yielding. He is determined the trafficking bill will pass—with the Hyde Amendment language intact—before the Senate gets to work on any other matter. And so cloture vote after cloture vote is called;but because it requires 60 votes to shut down debate, and there are not 60 Republicans, the filibuster goes on.

So whose fault is it that victims of sex trafficking are being denied help and law enforcement is being refused tools it needs to go after perpetrators?

What should be noted is that by these procedural maneuvers McConnell is carrying water for the pro-life cause.

And he’spaying a price for it—getting hammered by some Republicans as well as by all Democrats. And now the Left’s media machine is playing the racist card against him.

Because Democrats continue to block the trafficking bill, other business in the Senate has stalled—including the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as new Attorney General. Lynch, an African-American, is a darling of the Left.

Rather than admit the truth about why the Lynch nomination is being delayed—which would expose the intransigence of the pro-abort extremists—the Left is shifting its meme to “racism.”

I watched a lengthy discussion and interview on MSNBC Thursday morning on precisely that theme—and the words “trafficking” and “Senate” did not cross anybody’s lips! Not a single allusion was made as to why the Lynch nomination is being delayed!

But of course, one always watches MSNBC with a samizdat mindset, on the lookout for what is not being said as well as for what is.

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) took to the Senate floor yesterday to talk about how Lynch was being sent “to the back of the bus.”

Loretta Lynch isn’t a victim of racism. She’s a victim of your own fanatical loyalty to abortion, Senator Durbin (who, by the way, didn’t vote to confirm Condi Rice as Secretary of State).  Or, in the more measured words of Senator McConnell’s spokesman Don Stewart:“The only thing holding up that vote is the Democrats’ filibuster of a bill that would help prevent kids from being sold into sex slavery.”

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Connie Marshner organized her first pro-life meeting in 1971, among Capitol Hill staffers who sensed a drift toward legalizing abortion.  She’s worked in the movement in one capacity or another ever since.