A female victim involved in the sex trafficking case against Jeffrey Epstein, now deceased, and his wife Ghislaine Maxwell is suing his estate after alleging she was raped and forced to have an abortion.

“I was assaulted, raped, and trafficked countless times in New York and Florida during a three-year period”, Elizabeth Stein told a New York court last year. She was also coerced into an abortion after she became pregnant while part of a vast sex trafficking ring of underage girls run by Epstein and Maxwell.

“At one point I became pregnant (by whom I am unsure) and aborted the baby… Things happened that were so traumatising that to this day I’m unable to speak about them; I don’t even have the vocabulary to describe them.”

Stein has now launched a lawsuit against Maxwell and the notorious billionaire’s estate. She was 21 years old when Maxwell first approached her in the 1990s, during which time Stein says she was raped repeatedly by Epstein’s clients.

The claimant was later present at the sentencing of Maxwell to 20 years jail time in June 2022. Epstein was found dead in his prison cell in 2019.

“Nothing will be OK again”

This month, SPUC highlighted coerced abortion at an event at Parliament attended by 12 MPs from various parties.

MPs had the opportunity to hear the harrowing stories of Hayley and Lydia, both coerced into abortions they didn’t want.

Hayley became a victim of coerced abortion at the age of 16 when she was pressured by her boyfriend to abort their baby.

“I cried the whole time. I just wanted someone to say, ‘STOP don’t do it.’ But nobody did. I remember they came to take me in and lay me on the bed to be put to sleep. I was crying so hard.

“The nurse was stroking my hair and saying, ‘It will all be ok.’ The last thing I said before I went to sleep was, ‘No, it won’t… Nothing will ever be ok again.’”

You can read Hayley’s full testimony here.

“Women must be protected from coerced abortion”

SPUC’s Michael Robinson, Executive Director (Public Affairs and Legal Services), said: “Abortion is one of the many forms of emotional abuse women are subjected to, leading to the violent killing of an unborn child, a horrific outcome that has for too long been ignored by the media and by politicians.

“SPUC is campaigning to raise awareness about this very serious issue, a blight on many women’s lives that must be recognised before action can be taken against it.

“In a world where the abortion industry and its apologists want more abortion, the reality of coercion is for them an inconvenient truth that they’d rather keep buried – ideology, not women’s wellbeing, comes first, which means that justice for women and their unborn babies is increasingly difficult to find.

“We call on the Health Secretary to urgently commission research into the prevalence of coerced abortion, and in so doing recognise it as a priority for health and social policy moving forward. Women must be protected from coerced abortion.”

15% of British adult women pressured into abortions

A 2022 poll of 1,060 British adult women found that 15% of respondents felt pressure to have an abortion they did not want.

Another survey, published in July 2023, found that 1 in 61 women were pressured by a boss at work to have an abortion. One mother was told, “It would be better for your career if you just brought a coat hanger.”

To find out more about the reality of coerced abortion, and to order public awareness materials, visit SPUC’s dedicated webpage by clicking here.

SPUC encourages supporters and members of the public to spread these materials around their local communities to help raise awareness about this important issue.