Vol 23, 2014 Annals of Health Law 72
HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF SEX TRAFFICKING
( 26.9%) than the next most common disease (Hepatitis C, 15.4%). Well
over half of survivors ( 63.8%) reported at least one gynecological symptom
other than STDs/STIs, with pain during sex ( 46.2%), urinary tract infections
( 43.8%), and vaginal discharge ( 33.3%) among the most common such
symptoms. The extent of reproductive health issues that survivors reported
is hardly surprising due to the extreme levels of sexual abuse these women
endured. On average, the respondents reported being used for sex by
approximately thirteen buyers per day, 29 with a median response of ten.
Some respondents reported typical days of as many as thirty to fifty buyers.
Reporting problems complicated the data regarding pregnancies and their
results, with some respondents answering related questions inconsistently. 30
While these reporting issues make precision impossible, the data merits
concluding with confidence that pregnancy, miscarriage, and abortion were
all common experiences for survivors in the study. Even without
accounting for possible underreporting, forty-seven of the sixty-six women
( 71.2%) who gave an answer for the number of pregnancies they had during
trafficking reported at least one pregnancy while being trafficked; fourteen
of these ( 21.2% of respondents) reported five or more pregnancies. Of the
29. Where victims gave a range for the number of buyers per day, the answer was coded
as the median of that range, using the lower median where the range contained an even
number of possibilities. For example, an answer of 5-7 was coded as 6 and an answer of 10-
15 was coded as 12.
30. For example, thirty-four respondents circled “pregnancy” as something they
experienced during trafficking in the survey’s first component, but an additional nineteen
women gave a number of one or greater to the open-ended question “How many pregnancies
did you have while being trafficked?” in the second component of the survey despite not
having circled “pregnancy” earlier, bringing the total to fifty-three. There is reason to
believe, however, that even the combined total of fifty-three women may underreport the
number who experienced a pregnancy because many of the victims may have had different
standards for what counted as a pregnancy. In some cases, the victims appeared not to count
pregnancies that ended in abortion or miscarriage, reporting for example, two pregnancies,
two live births, two miscarriages, and one abortion. Thus, women whose pregnancies all
ended in miscarriage or abortion may not be reflected even in the combined total of fifty-three. Similar discrepancies occurred on a smaller scale with regard to miscarriages (
thirty-two subjects circled, ten more did not circle but reported one or more, and two subjects who
had circled nonetheless reported zero as the number they had) and abortions (thirty-nine
subjects circled, three additional subjects did not circle but reported having one or more).
There were additional inconsistent sequences of answers about pregnancies and pregnancy
outcomes. Thirty-nine subjects reported numbers of births, miscarriages, and abortions that
totaled a different number than the subject reported as her total number of pregnancies or
gave otherwise conflicting answers. In most of these cases, there was no obvious explanation
that accounted for the difference. Possible explanations include varying standards of what
counts as a pregnancy, multiple-child births (twins, triplets, etc.), and answering different
questions with reference to different periods of time ( i.e., counting only pregnancies
occurring during trafficking but counting all miscarriages, births, or abortions whether
before, during, or after trafficking).
