“Abortion is a necessary cog that keeps the sex trafficking machinery humming. Without it, many victims would be sidelined by pregnancy,” writes Bradley Mattes in a recent article on the LifeNews.com website.

Besides the horrors of dismembering children in the womb, abortion also provides cover for abusers of sex slaves. In spite of modern technologies’ ability to provide sexual pleasure without consequences, unexpected pregnancies do interrupt the game. Fortunately, news is beginning to dribble out exposing this form of sex slavery that can happen even in our neighborhoods.

Sex trafficking is only part of a much larger picture, human trafficking. This involves:

“The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit,” according to the United Nations.

The UN estimates that there are 49.6 million people in slavery worldwide with 35% of them being children. But sex trafficking is the most common type in the United States.

Statistics are very difficult to come by because of the shady nature of this activity. Some have likened it to the frog-in-the-well analogy. So many are brought into it while young and do not realize that their situation is abnormal. Others see no way out of their situation because they have nowhere to go and no one else to provide the necessities of life.

One US state department report suggested that sex trafficking involves somewhere between 15,000 and 50,000 women and girls in a given year. An international organization reports 3.8 million adults sexually trafficked globally with 1,000,000 of them children. One tip line for missing and exploited children receives millions of reports every year.

Fortunately, their plight is beginning to gain exposure. This has inspired some churches to step up and provide sanctuary or create separate organizations focused on their rescue.

Thus, in a way, the current effort against abortion has a ripple effect. Abortion is not only an enabler for sex trafficking but for other evils in our culture. Modern contraceptives are viewed by some as a benefit in adjusting the number of children to the family’s ability to properly bring them to maturity.

On the other hand, it has enabled the culture to focus much of its energy on sexual addiction without the consequences. History is littered with nations whose standard of living cratered when their focus became sensual pleasure instead of production and innovation.

Abortion can lead to another form of sexual slavery, spousal abuse. Many wives feel trapped without the resources to escape sexually abusive marriages. Coercion into abortion often figures into this sad picture.

Unfortunately, modern contraception has become an excuse to enjoy the pleasures of sin and avoid the consequences. And abortion has come to be seen as just another convenient contraceptive instead of the brutal murder of a living child.

But God said that those who spill innocent blood will not be held guiltless. It is true that Christ’s shed blood covers our guilt, but millions of women now carry a hole in their mother's heart for the little one they can never hold in their arms.

Jack Chick wrote two tracts attempting to show both the brutality of abortion and the need for compassion by the man and woman involved.