Our culture does a brisk business in dehumanized bodies, it seems. We have a 10 billion dollar industry selling viewing rights to various body parts in various configurations. That we already know about. Porn is the dehumanized body display case. But if looking isn’t quite enough, you can also purchase dehumanized bodies, human meat, from sex traffickers if you’re so inclined. And now we find out that Planned Parenthood is auctioning off fetal body parts to the highest bidder as well. You know, if the previously available dehumanized bodies were too intact for your taste. Strangely, these various human meat markets are quite connected.

The link between pornography and sex trafficking is quite well-established. Basically all of the “johns” who buy enslaved women for sex were first “addicted” to pornography. At some point, the rush wasn’t enough and they wanted to perform misogynistic, dehumanizing, often violent, sexual acts firsthand:

Dr. Gail Dines, a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College who also chairs its American Studies department, said in comment for this piece that “we know that trafficking is increasing — which means demand is increasing. This means that men are increasingly willing to have sex with women who are being controlled and abused by pimps and traffickers.”

“There are only two conclusions here: That men are naturally willing to do this to women — biology — or that they are being socialized by the culture to lose all empathy for women,” Dines said. “I refuse to accept that men are born rapists, porn users, or johns.”

“As an academic, a sociologist, and mother, I believe it is the way men are shaped by society,” said Dines. “The biggest sex educator of young men today is pornography, which is increasingly violent and dehumanizing, and it changes the way men view women.”

One of the clearest single examples illustrating this fact is none other than serial killer Ted Bundy, who delivered a damning condemnation of pornography in one of his last interviews before his execution:

So pornography is the display case. Human bodies are the product. In order to promote feelings of guiltlessness in the consumer, the abused human bodies in our various human meat markets are presented without souls, without real feelings. The bodies on sale are merely parts and tissue configured for your pleasure and available at your convenience. A convincing robot you don’t have to feel bad about using, abusing, and discarding. That is what porn teaches us about human beings. Sex trafficking is just the natural outworking of that. And so is abortion.

There is no question where babies come from. And when you have an entire culture obsessed with consequenceless, emotionless sex, it’s inevitable that the human byproduct of those loveless conjugations should be ignored at all costs—even to death. We all knew that was happening. For some reason, we accepted it as women’s health, even when it was the consequence of the abandonment, objectification, and abuse of women. So, yes, we already knew that the unborn were being killed. In extraordinary numbers. They were and are being killed because sex isn’t about respect, reciprocity, or reproduction anymore. It’s about self-expression and self-gratification.

But what few of us know is that the metaphorical meat market of selfish sex has created a literal meat market of unborn babies. Unborn babies are being butchered carefully and literally. And their parts are being sold to the highest bidder. That is the logical conclusion of our human meat markets: emptiness, slavery, and death. But what is it packaged as? Fulfillment, liberation, and healthcare. It has never before been so clear what a lie that has been all along.