Human trafficking: How ObGyns can—and should—be helping survivors

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Despite increasing media coverage of human trafficking and the gravity of its many ramifications, I am struck by how often trainees and other clinicians present to me patients for which trafficking is a real potential concern—yet who give me a blank expression when I ask if anyone has screened these patients for being victims of trafficking. I suspect that few of us anticipated, during medical training, that we would be providing care to women who are enslaved.

How large is the problem?

It is impossible to comprehend the true scope of human trafficking. Estimates are that 20.9 million men, women, and children globally are forced into work that they are not free to leave.¹

Although human trafficking is recognized as a global phenomenon, its prevalence in the United States is significant enough that it should prompt the health care community to engage in helping identify and assist victims/survivors: From January until June of 2017, the National Human Trafficking Hotline received 13,807 telephone calls, resulting in reporting of 4,460 cases.² Indeed, from 2015 to 2016 there was a 35.7% increase in the number of hotline cases reported, for a total of 7,572 (6,340—more than 80%—of which regarded females). California had the most cases reported (1,323), followed by Texas (670) and Florida (550); those 3 states also reported an increase in trafficking crime. Vermont (5), Rhode Island (9), and Alaska (10) reported the fewest calls.³

How is trafficking defined?

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime defines “trafficking in persons” as:

… recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.⁴

Traffickers prey on potentially vulnerable people. Girls and young women who have experienced poverty, homelessness, childhood sexual abuse, substance abuse, gender nonconformity, mental illness, or developmental delay are at particular risk.⁵ Children who have had interactions with Child Protective Services, come from a dysfunctional family, or have lived in a community with high crime, political or social unrest, corruption, or gender bias and discrimination are also at increased risk.⁶

Read about clues that raise clinical suspicion