Sec. 2. Findings

296 words·~1 min read·/bill/117/hr/6536/ih/section-2

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Congress finds the following: Slavery and involuntary servitude are incompatible with American society and law. The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished legal slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States. Despite slavery being abolished in 1865, modern forms of slavery still exist throughout the United States. Every year, hundreds of thousands of Americans and immigrants are coerced into commercial sex acts against their will. In addition to sexual exploitation, victims of trafficking suffer repeated physical, mental, and emotional abuse at the hands of their traffickers.

Abortion providers and facilities aid sex traffickers by turning a blind eye to the plight of abused women. The Department of State’s 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report indicated that sex traffickers coerce women into receiving abortions against their will. Research conducted by Laura J. Lederer and Christopher A. Wetzel, entitled The Health Consequences of Sex Trafficking and Their Implications for Identifying Victims in Healthcare Facilities published in the Annals of Health Law Journal, indicated that 71 percent of women coerced into commercial sex acts reported at least one pregnancy and 21 percent reported five or more pregnancies while trafficked (23 Annals Health L. 61 (2014)).

Lederer and Wetzel’s research found that almost a third of women trafficked reported underwent numerous abortions as victims of trafficking. More than half of respondents answered that their abortion while a victim of sex trafficking was a result of coercion. One victim of sex trafficking recounted, [in most of my six abortions,] I was under serious pressure from my pimps to abort the babies . A moral obligation exists to report suspected instances of sex trafficking to authorities.

Section 2 of the 13th Amendment empowers Congress to enact appropriate legislation to combat all forms of slavery and involuntary servitude, including forced sex trafficking.