Dearborn — It’s been 151 years since the end of the Civil War, and slavery still exists in America. Now, it’s called trafficking.

According to data released by the FBI, the forcible kidnapping and confinement of human beings for sexual exploitation or forced physical labor is a $32 billion industry in the United States.

Michigan has the second most reported cases of human trafficking in the country, prompting Gov. Rick Snyder and Attorney General Bill Schuette in 2012 to establish the State of Michigan Human Trafficking Task Force Health Advisory Board to raise awareness and combat “modern day slavery.”

On May 5, Sheila Meshinski, a forensic sexual assault nurse examiner appointed by Gov. Snyder to the task force, spoke at the annual Dearborn Area Right to Life “Focus on Life” dinner, highlighting the horrors of human trafficking and what can be done to stop it.

During her talk, “Life: Respect and Dignity in the Streets,” Meshinski detailed what she has seen as a forensic sexual assault nurse examiner at Henry Ford Macomb Hospital.

“Human trafficking is more widespread now than it was in the Civil War,” Meshinski told the room full of people at the Knights of Columbus O’Kelly Banquet Hall in Dearborn. “We call it ‘modern slavery,’ because people are snatched up, and many in the health care or law enforcement community never put these victims together with what was happening.”

As part of the state task force, it is Meshinski’s job to raise awareness and train law enforcement, health care professionals, hotel and utility workers to recognize the signs of human trafficking and ways to stop the underground industry of forcibly moving and selling human beings.

“If you don’t know about it, how are you going to prevent it?” Meshinski said. “We’re trying to get cops, medical professionals, occupational people who go door to door to notice. Human trafficking involves people being forced through violence, fraud and coercion; subjugating them to involuntary servitude and sexual exploitation.”

Meshinski described how traffickers stalk and select their victims, keeping them in a state of limbo in plain sight, meaning people in the general public might meet a victim without even noticing.

“Many don’t recognize that these people who are being busted for prostitution or soliciting are trafficking victims, that when they are in the hospital it is more than just sexual assault,” Meshinski told The Michigan Catholic after her keynote address. “We weren’t taught this in nursing schools, and now just starting to spread the word to people about what human trafficking looks like.

Joanne McKay, Dearborn Area Right to Life treasurer, said the group wanted to host Meshinski because of the connection between human trafficking and the forced abortions that make the targets of human trafficking victims twice over.

“We’ve had other pro-life speakers, but as an emergency nurse, I’m aware of how (little) health care professionals know about human trafficking,” McKay said. “As I thought about human trafficking, I thought about how it goes along with the forced abortions associated with these victims of human trafficking. In this work, we’re bound to this topic.”

In addition to the coerced abortions associated with human trafficking, McKay stressed the importance of Right to Life in shedding light on a pro-life issue that doesn’t get as much attention.

“People don’t like to think about this as ‘slavery,’ but it is, and slavery is something that’s not acceptable, it’s why this is in the underworld,” McKay said. “This is a national problem, and the public is uninformed about it, so who better than the pro-life movement to step up and talk about this problem?”