How Anti-'Abortion Trafficking' Laws Actually *Harm* Youth Trafficking Survivors

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How Anti-‘Abortion Trafficking’ Laws Actually *Harm* Youth Trafficking Survivors
6/12/2023 by Aisha Mays and Subasri Narasimhan
Anti-abortion legislators are trying to exert the same kind of control over young people’s bodies that actual trafficking depends on.



Teenagers protest the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case on July 2, 2022, on the main street in Driggs, Idaho—one of the most extreme anti-abortion states in the U.S. (Natalie Behring / Getty Images)

In the unrelenting push to end abortion access, young people’s rights face a new threat: In April, Idaho Governor Brad Little (R) signed House Bill (HB) 242 into law—a first-of-its-kind policy that will charge people who help minors access abortion across state lines or procure abortion pills without parental consent, with “abortion trafficking,” a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Laws like this will likely begin to appear in another anti-abortion states and state legislatures, as restrictive abortion laws tend to spread state to state.

Laws that attempt to limit abortion-related travel force birth on vulnerable young people, including sexually exploited youth. Vigilance is crucial in stopping the spread and ensuring young people get the care they need and deserve. HB 242’s language names the potential crime “abortion trafficking,” a fallacious and deliberate attempt to spread misinformation on abortion. Minors seeking an abortion and minors who are trafficked may overlap, but equating abortion-seeking to ‘trafficking’ undermines the brutal and inhumane realities that youth trafficking survivors endure. Ultimately, for vulnerable children, HB 242 codifies the human rights and bodily autonomy abuses that true anti-trafficking laws, like the Trafficking Victims and Protection Act, aim to reduce. Anti-abortion legislators are trying to exert the same kind of control over young people’s bodies that actual trafficking depends on.



Estimates of the number of U.S. young people affected by commercial sexual exploitation are imprecise and have ranged from thousands to millions. For exploited minors, risk of pregnancy is five times that of their adolescent counterparts and associated with sexual, physical and emotional violence—making pregnancy and parenthood dangerous. Exploiters may use pregnancy as a way of strengthening control of a young person and to facilitate increasing abuse; once pregnant, a minor’s ability to leave a trafficking situation erodes. For those experiencing exploitation, access to abortion can be a tool for reproductive freedom. Taking away the opportunity for safe abortion and criminalizing people youth may trust to support them undermines the youth’s reproductive autonomy and can also threaten their lifelong safety.
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Adolescent health professionals and advocates must remain vigilant and continue to mobilize a multi-strategy response to ensure adolescents’ reproductive rights amid current assaults, like HB 242. The adoption of shield laws in states like California, Washington, Oregon, Illinois and New York may provide some level of protection for abortion patients who travel out of state for services, and the providers that serve them. Still, ultimately, laws like HB 242 must be stopped. This Idaho law, and the slate of similar bills that are sure to follow, will further complicate an already difficult landscape for trafficked youth seeking autonomous healthcare—a group that is often left out of conversations on abortion.

https://msmagazine.com/2023/06/12/abortion-trafficking-idaho/