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.

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.

“We’re on the bill. And these provisions, my caucus did not know about them. You can blame it on staff, blame it on whoever you want to blame it on, but we didn’t know it was in the bill,” Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Tuesday. “The bill will not come off this floor as long as that language is in the bill.”