BY MARY STROKA
Abortion and human trafficking are connected.
I'm used to thinking of abortion and human trafficking as separate issues. I know that they both violate human rights, but I hadn't considered them interconnected. But Rob Schwarzwalder, senior vice president of the Family Research Council, wrote in an article published last week that abortion and human trafficking "build upon one another in a growing cascade of moral horror."
He cites a report by the Elliot Institute that found that "nearly 80 percent of the women who aborted the pregnancy reported that abortion had been the wrong solution," and he also cites LiveAction's controversial videos that make it appear that Planned Parenthood is complicit with sex trafficking. He quotes Steve Wagner's National Catholic Register article as well:
If someone is being trafficked -- which is to say, under the domination of a pimp/trafficker -- she is by definition unable to provide informed consent to an abortion or to a regime of contraception. The victim has no voice in this decision. Indeed, providing such services to a victim of sexual trafficking benefits only the trafficker by getting the victim back out on the street and making money sooner.
Schwarzwalder is right in calling for pro-lifers to commit themselves to ending human trafficking regardless, but this connection is logical.