The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting debunks the connection between sex trafficking and the fertility industry in Cyprus:
I came to Cyprus almost positive that there was a direct link between sex trafficking and the fertility industry. The beach road in Limassol is dotted with cabarets and brothels where trafficked women are sold by the hour. The country is a repeat offender on the UN Department of State’s anti-trafficking TIPPS report that shows how the government here directly supports the trade in women. The government issues more than 300 special “artist” visas to cabaret workers and the local press is full of accounts of women tricked into working in brothels. The women are forced to pay back their plane tickets to brothel owners and have few rights in the eyes of the law. Along the way into the country they are first screened by doctors at the government hospitals, given a clean chit of health and set to work—a perfect opportunity for a fertility clinic to convince them to sell their eggs. After all, the profile of egg donors and prostitutes is fairly similar—young, beautiful women, mainly eastern European with an aura of fertility.
The facts on the
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