7 steps to reduce the sex trafficking epidemic
“The United States needs to stop handing over children to ‘probable [sex] traffickers,’” say 22 state attorney generals in a February 26 open letter to the leaders of the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
These top law enforcement officers claim that thousands of the more than 85,000 migrant children flooding across the border “have now fallen victim to … sex trafficking.” The crisis has reached a boiling point such that they have provided only five days for federal law enforcement to respond.
Just a week earlier at the southern border, National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd, union leader representing 18,000 border patrol agents, was interviewed saying that the U.S. is, “paying money to take these children and sell them into sex slavery.”
And a week before Judd’s startling revelation, the Epstein sex crime syndicate, according to a lawsuit filed ironically on Valentine’s Day by several of his trafficking victims in New York, claim the FBI gave tacit approval of the sex trafficking ring, looking the other way.
But, as heinous as sex trafficking is, America needs to look at the obvious biological result of sex abuse: pregnancy. The goal of rapists, abusers, pimps and handlers is to cover their crimes and keep their human product producing cash, either through pornographic material, prostitution, or both. And how do they handle their sex slaves’ pregnancies? They make deals with abortionists or purchase chemical abortion drugs. According to one report, 55% of sex trafficking survivors reported being forced to have an abortion with 30% having multiple abortions. Another survey of 1,123 victims of sex trafficking, revealed that 758 were trafficked as girls (age 11-17) and 90% (683) had at least one abortion as a minor.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists published a standard of care for identifying the signs of sex trafficking in order for medical professionals to truly advocate for the health and well-being of women and girls. Is the abortion industry using that standard?
Most if not all states mandate reporting of suspected sexual abuse, especially of a minor, by medical professionals. In states like New York, where minors are considered emancipated for reproductive health decision-making, grey areas emerge. However, historically any recipients of Title X federal funding are required to report suspected cases of abuse.
Former abortion clinic executive, Myra Rodriguez, blew the whistle in Arizona, outraged at the atrocities committed against migrant women pregnant by sex abuse. She said, “We need to stop the business of abortionists attacking our women and going after our immigrant and minority communities.”
In a recent Project Veritas investigation, the employees of an abortion business casually discussed how to facilitate the illegal transport and abortion for pregnant minors. Because of this investigation, on February 29, the Missouri attorney general announced a lawsuit against that abortion business citing “a conspiracy to conceal the sexual exploitation of children.” All other 49 states ought to file similar lawsuits, especially blue states like New York, supposedly so dedicated to the reproductive rights of women.
Notice the conspicuous absence of abortion industry leaders in decrying the mass sex abuse targeting women and girls? Yet, anti-abortion pregnancy center leaders speak out.
The day before the annual March for Life, January 18, outside the Capitol building alongside many congressional representatives, the hard truth was revealed that abortion is the glove hiding the fingerprints of sex slavery when I asked why “no one is bothering to ask which abortion business was servicing Jeffery Epstein’s international sex crime syndicate in New York City.” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul seeks only to protect abortionists under the pretense of reproductive rights. New York Attorney General Letitia James seeks to ensure that women have no choice but abortion. And President Joe Biden, instead of drafting an executive order to investigate the abortion industry’s complicity in the multi-billion-dollar sex slave trade, demands the DOJ investigate pro-life people seeking to spare women and girls from being revictimized.
The letter from the 22 AGs noted, “There are also numerous examples of young women brought across the border in Texas only to be placed immediately into sex trafficking rings. In a country that claims to value both children and the rule of law, this cannot happen.”
The following is my first draft of America’s project S.T.O.P. (Sex Trafficking Opposition Plan) containing seven solid steps toward abating the epidemic of sex abuse and slavery of women and girls:
- Reinstate rapid DNA testing for minors and families at the Southern border.
- Demand all state attorneys general engage in civil investigations into unreported abortions perpetrated against minors.
- Mandate all abortionists report all abortions perpetrated against girls under the age of 18, transported across state lines (Mann Act), or to whom drugs were shipped across state lines (Comstock Act).
- Encourage state and federal legislation to prohibit the electronic dissemination and consumption of child porn through smartphones, which is a means for generating profit from sex trafficking.
- Mandate through local, state, and federal law that all purveyors of pornography must be registered with every state just like telemarketing solicitors, setting criminal penalties and fines for uncompensated production and unsolicited dissemination.
- Track the sale and delivery of chemical abortion, confirming age and gender, flagging purchases of more than one dose, purchases made by minors, purchases made by a male, and repeat purchases within one month.
- Make sex trafficking and moral dilemmas of personhood a mandatory ethics class in all medical schools while increasing awareness in the medical community through Continuing Education Units for signs of sex trafficking in a patient, and providing funding to pregnancy centers to develop and deliver this education.
Rev. Jim Harden, M.Div. is a medical ethicist, author of the newly published Ethical Theory and Pertinent Standards in Women’s Reproductive Health, and CEO of CompassCare Pregnancy Services. He pioneered the first measurable and repeatable medical model in the pregnancy center movement and has written extensively on medical ethics, pro-life policy, and executive leadership. Rev. Harden has developed materials and strategies used by hundreds of pregnancy centers nationwide, helping them become more effective at serving women and saving babies from abortion.
