We got home and he beat me with that bullwhip and told me to go to sleep. How many women live through this type of abuse every day remains unknown. Like slaves, prostitutes are raped, beaten, and tortured at the whim of the men who control them.
It is no coincidence that at the start of the twentieth century the U. This Note argues that forced prostitution is slavery for purposes of the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition against slavery and involuntary servitude; 6 therefore government officials who fail to enforce laws against pimps are acting unconstitutionally. Part 11 shows that abolitionists condemned masters' exploitation of female slaves' sexuality as one of the evils of slavery and equated it with prostitution.
Part Ill surveys Thirteenth Amendment jurisprudence and demonstrates that forced prostitution violates the Amendment. Part IV explores potential remedies against state officials for failing to protect prostitutes' constitutional rights. While the idea that forced prostitution is slavery may not be immediately apparent to some readers, the legal system takes for granted the analogy between specific performance in personal service contracts and slavery.
But should Thirteenth Amendment protection be reserved for James Taylor as he attempts to get out of a contract to sing, 8 or should it be used to free people who are literally treated as chattels?
As we come closer to an understanding of what forced prostitution means for the women involved, the similarities between forced prostitution and slavery appear striking: Both pimps and antebellum slave masters have and had economic investments in women's sexual functions. Like the slaves of old, prostitutes today are forced to act against their will and sleep with their masters and other men. Like masters of old, pimps are organized, albeit loosely, and return fugitive women to each other.
