Amy Klobuchar suffered weeks of grief for an error that sparked a battle over abortion in the Senate and prolonged Loretta Lynch’s wait to become attorney general.

And no one was more relieved Tuesday to put the debacle behind her than the two-term Minnesota Democrat.

Story Continued Below

Klobuchar has been at the center of the showdown over what initially appeared to be a noncontroversial bill she co-authored to prevent girls from being sold into sex slavery. But when she and fellow Democrats failed to notice an anti-abortion provision in the bill, the legislation ended up prompting weeks of partisan bickering and tension within the Senate Democratic Caucus.

The scrap then ensnared Lynch when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised the chamber would move on her confirmation only after the trafficking bill — with its ugly abortion fight — was settled.

The strain of the episode took a toll on Democrats.

At one point, Klobuchar — along with Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Maria Cantwell of Washington — got in a heated discussion during a closed-door lunch over how the anti-abortion provision had been overlooked. Cantwell even suggested later that Klobuchar was being unfairly blamed by male senators, according to lawmakers who gave an account of the exchange. Klobuchar later outed a staff member for failing to alert her to the anti-abortion provision, a move that’s generally frowned upon in the Senate.

It took six weeks, but Democratic leaders ended up cutting a face-saving deal Tuesday that will clear the way for the trafficking bill and Lynch’s confirmation.

Asked to describe the personal toll of the past several weeks, Klobuchar said: “Not the most pleasant.”

Indeed, while leaders in both parties hailed Tuesday’s deal as a bipartisan breakthrough, rank-and-file lawmakers privately wondered whether it accomplished much of anything. Klobuchar and top Democrats argued that they’d stopped the expansion of the so-called Hyde Amendment — which prevents federal dollars from being spent on abortions — while Republican leaders said they stood their ground and kept the bill’s prohibitions on abortion procedures.

In the end, though, for all the backbiting over abortion and drama over Lynch, the result is unlikely to move the abortion debate meaningfully in either party’s direction.

“I don’t know that there’s much difference from what was proposed earlier,” Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) said Tuesday.

During the past week, as lawmakers tossed accusations of racism back and forth, and President Barack Obama chastised Republicans for causing what he deemed an “embarrassing” delay of Lynch’s confirmation, lawmakers from both parties scrambled for a solution.

Getting one was not easy.

The cause of the standoff was a provision in the trafficking bill to bar money from a restitution fund for victims from a privately funded restitution account being used to pay for abortions. The bill sailed through the Senate Judiciary Committee — of which Klobuchar is a member and Leahy the top Democrat — with no opposition on Feb. 26. It came to the Senate floor with no dissent on March 9.

It was only then that Democrats noticed the abortion language. But it was too late for them to block the bill from coming to the Senate floor, leaving them the choice of swallowing their mistake and voting for the bill or opposing a measure to help sympathetic crime victims. Democrats chose to vote it down five times on the Senate floor, as lawmakers such as Heitkamp and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) tried to strike a deal.

The solution announced Tuesday is so technical that it’s unlikely to make a mark on the rest of the Congress or the campaign trail next year: The restitution fund now has two revenue streams, one from traffickers and another from the federal government’s general fund. The money from traffickers can’t be used for medical procedures, while the general fund money is subject to Hyde Amendment restrictions on abortion, like all other federal spending.

The deal was negotiated by the lead GOP sponsor of the bill, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, and two members of the Democratic leadership, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. While Klobuchar was kept apprised of the discussions, leaders took control of the talks after it was apparent that the Minnesota Democrat was perhaps overly eager to end the partisan impasse, according to four people familiar with the matter.

Things became especially tense after Democrats publicly revealed they hadn’t read the bill closely enough to notice the abortion provisions when it was taken up by the Judiciary Committee.

“There was some tension in the caucus,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, a member of the Judiciary Committee. “And I felt it personally.”

During the closed-door lunch last month in the Senate’s Lyndon Baines Johnson Room, what irked some senators was Klobuchar’s initial refusal to take responsibility for the error, according to lawmakers who described the exchange. She pointed to the number of aides and Democrats who serve on the Judiciary Committee who pored over the bill and also missed it.

“I want women in our caucus to be treated with respect — and I want them to have a voice,” Cantwell said Tuesday when asked about the dispute between Leahy and Klobuchar. While Cantwell acknowledged that male senators often confront other male senators, “if I feel like someone is trying to push one of our [female] colleagues, I’m going to say something about it.”

Leahy and Klobuchar downplayed the dispute Tuesday. The senior senator from Vermont wrote in an email that he worked with Sens. Barbara Mikulski and Murray — along with Klobuchar — to break the impasse.

Klobuchar wasn’t interested in dissecting the initial failure to catch the abortion provision. “A lot going on in the beginning of the year, and everyone is taking responsibility for that on the Judiciary Committee. Nobody is really talking about that today. We’re talking about how we move forward.”

Asked about how staff could have missed the abortion provision, a Klobuchar spokesperson told The Associated Press last month that one of the senator’s aides noticed the provision but “did not inform the senator.” While the spokesperson added that Klobuchar “takes responsibility,” the fact that an aide was singled out surprised many in the Senate.

“That’s not what I would do,” said a Democratic senator.

The aide whom her office said missed the language still works for Klobuchar, her office said Tuesday.

Cornyn said Klobuchar was among many senators with whom he discussed a possible deal, but he still doubts that one Klobuchar aide could have been responsible for the impasse.

“There was a lot of angst over this because it was hidden in plain sight. And you have a bunch of high-priced, elite, law school-educated staff who surely can read it,” Cornyn said. “I just don’t find that plausible.”

Though the trafficking bill had sapped the Senate’s energy for six weeks — and created a logjam for Lynch, an Iran review bill, a cybersecurity proposal and education reform — there was little evidence that many people outside the Beltway were tuned in to the debate. If people were paying attention, it was mostly because of the trafficking bill’s connection to Lynch.

Still, the damage inflicted within Congress was acute. Durbin said he was sympathetic to the position in which Klobuchar found herself.

“She has poured her heart and soul for four straight weeks,” Durbin said. “I’ve talked to her almost every single day, and she’s talked to almost every single member, just trying to explore different paths to get this bill forward.”