In many parts of the world, young girls are lured with promises, or simply carried off to be sold as sex slaves. Born in poverty, they are condemned to live a sad and hopeless life. The cries of these throwaway girls have been largely ignored until recent years.

Human trafficking and slavery depend on corruption, which depends on cash. Cutting off the global flow of money that is essential to greasing palms of corrupt officials would go a long way toward ending this barbarity. How to achieve that is another story.

Accepting the trafficking of women and girls as a norm coarsens our culture. In a recent address, our President said, "as a nation, we've long rejected such cruelty." Yet sadly, with each purchase of another human, we become that much more callous to the casual cruelty of trafficking.

Finland has a history of exposing traffickers, but only recently has the world woken up to focus on the canker of sex slavery. An art installation in Helsinki points out the reality of prostitution for export by China.