Sorry Beyonce, girls don’t run this mutha at all: On prostitution, super bowl trafficking & gendercide.

According to an article in Business Insider there are approximately 42 billion prostitutes world-wide with an estimated 1 million living in the US even though it’s legal only in Nevada.

Connie Anderson, an InterVarsity colleague of mine who works with human trafficking agencies in Ohio sent out a helpful message on Facebook today:

“When we think of human trafficking, one image that often comes to mind is sex tourism, with customers traveling to places where there are ready victims. It also works the other way around. Traffickers take victims (usually young girls) to places where there will be a lot of potential customers; places like the city where the Super Bowl is held. Please pray for the InterVarsity students in Indianapolis who are passing out info about trafficking, and for my friend T. Flores who has a team educating hotel/motel management and staff and putting specially marked soaps in Indy-area hotel/motel rooms. The label on the back side of the soap asks some red flag questions and gives the National Trafficking Hot Line number.”

photo credit: Associated Press

This morning an article at The Blaze nearly brought me to tears and reminded me just how awful things are for women world-wide: apparently an Afghan woman has been strangled to death, when she gave birth to her second daughter.  Her husband had threatened to kill her if she couldn’t produce a male child.  For the past few months, there have been other reports of the terror women are living in Afghanistan including a 15-year-old who was tortured and forced into prostitution by her own in-laws and a female rape victim imprisoned for adultery.

The abortion of infant baby girls across China and many other Eastern countries continues on a mass scale.

Are you completely depressed and overwhelmed yet?

I share this with you so that you can join me in being mindful & attentive to of the cares and needs of women around the world.  So that we can do whatever we are able to end their suffering, no matter how big or small.  So that we can remember to pray for our sisters —even the ones not yet out of the womb.  And so that we can put our own problems into sharp perspective.

A sestina for an escaped sex slave