WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved legislation increasing penalties for domestic human trafficking and exploitation of children.
After weeks of debating the bipartisan bill, which got hung up in a fight over anti-abortion language that had been included by Republicans, the Senate voted to pass the measure.
The House of Representatives has passed a series of bills aimed at combating human trafficking. It was not yet clear how the two chambers would reconcile their differences.
Besides imposing tougher financial penalties on traffickers, the Senate bill would establish a fund, using penalties collected, to award grants to combat the problem and provide services for victims of child pornography.
The measure also aims to strengthen law enforcement training programs to improve investigations of human trafficking and to rescue victims, who often are minors.
"This is not something that is happening just in far-away lands. It happens in our own backyard. It happens to 12-year-olds in my own state," said Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who played a role in getting the legislation passed.
Last year, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline received reports of 3,598 sex trafficking cases inside the United States, according to the Polaris Project, which operates the call center.
It estimated that one in six runaway minors reported to them likely were sex trafficking victims.
Passage of the bill was threatened after Democrats realized Republicans had inserted language that Democrats claimed would have expanded federal limits on abortions.
After weeks of wrangling, the two sides reached a deal in which the anti-abortion provision would only apply to the use of federal funds for health care procedures, which kept it in line with existing policies mandated by Congress.