Written by Meirav Solomon
Sex trafficking is the best card in the political deck. Politicians from Donald Trump to John Cornyn to Tammy Duckworth have used sex trafficking to build walls and even regulate abortion. Because no politician wants to seem to be against stopping sex trafficking, wasteful and deficient bills are passed without a second glance. It’s time to stop playing the sex trafficking card as your saving grace and start creating meaningful legislation that brings it to a halting stop. Donald Trump has continuously repeated that illegal immigration is the cause of sex trafficking when truthful statistics can prove just the opposite. Undocumented immigrants seem to be one of the many growing demographics targeted by traffickers in the United States. The fact that our President uses the critical issue of sex trafficking as a political tool to lure people into thinking a wall on our southern border is going to fix sex trafficking is disgusting at the very least. Sex trafficking is a genuine issue in this country and to have be delegitimized by our own President is quite frankly humiliating and infuriating. John Cornyn and Tammy Duckworth authored a bipartisan bill in 2015 against sex trafficking and worked on eliminating it which sounds awesome. Yet, the GOP lobbied John Cornyn into adding in a special clause concerning abortion in which said that it would eliminate most funding for abortions that resulted from sex trafficking victims. The fact that the GOP couldn’t look past abortion to understand the gravity of sex trafficking in the US is a testament to what they truly care about. Tammy Duckworth was also complicit in this because Democrats didn’t notice the pro-life policy nuances until after the bill was passed. At the time, Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said, “What do you want me to tell you? We missed it!”. The simple acknowledgement that they had let language slip on such a ground-breaking bill shows how little attention they paid to this imperative bill compared to other ones that are perceived as more important because of their controversy. Turns out, you don’t actually need legislation to stop sex trafficking on the local level. Educate yourself about sex trafficking and the demographics that pimps target so that you can be ready and alert. You can keep your eyes out in your neighborhood for signs of suspicious activities and young people who are suffering from malnutrition, evidence of physical abuse or substance abuse. Call the national hotline for human trafficking at 1-888-373-7888, if you see anything similar to the previous examples stated. The Stolen Dreams Campaign, of which I am a founding member of, works tirelessly to end sex trafficking through education and awareness. Follow us @stolendreamscampaign on Instagram or @Stolendreamsca1 on Twitter! Contrary to popular belief, a wall won’t stop sex trafficking. Neither will regulating abortion. A wall can’t stop drugs from coming into our country anymore than sex traffickers or victims of sex trafficking. Regulating abortion may make it even harder for pregnant victims of sex trafficking to leave behind that part of their life. Think about having to have the child of someone who abused you, emotionally and physically. How can we make them birth that same child when we don’t do the same with women who are raped? I find a lot of my issues with politicians in this day and age, across the spectrum, are sprouted from their secretive yet strong disregard for the core issues that affect most Americans every day. When money comes into play or when a political move can be made they take it. In the game of politics, sex trafficking is the saving grace card that politicians can use to bring up their approval ratings when things go bad for their reputation. In no way do I want you to read this and hate American government because it truly is an amazing body of incredible, intelligent and (mostly) kind people. But, it is also important to recognize its faults because when our politicians choose to look away, to play the sex trafficking card, they are playing right into the hands of pimps. The real perpetrators.