Many Alabama citizens are glad that the Alabama Resolution to Declare Pornography a Public Health Crisis was unanimously passed in the Senate. There is no question that it should pass with strong bipartisan support in the House as it has in multiple other states.

Declaring pornography a public health crisis in Alabama is not a political, moral, or religious statement, and it has nothing to do with censorship of legal material. Instead, this needed resolution has everything to do with equipping the public with important facts and raising awareness on the health and justice issues related to consumption of illegal, hardcore pornography.

As a marriage and family therapist in private practice for 20 years, I have become intimately familiar with the devastating effects associated with today’s easily accessible internet pornography. Because I frequently focus on infidelity recovery and sexual intimacy enhancement cases, I have become very familiar with the often long-term negative effects of hardcore internet pornography on sexual intimacy, sexual performance, trust, fidelity, and self-esteem in committed relationships. I am also familiar with the isolation, anxiety, depression, compulsive sexual behavior, and erectile dysfunction associated with pornography addiction. I know very well the challenges and benefits of recovery. What I did not know about hardcore pornography until halfway through my career was the often immediate and damaging effects of exposure to hardcore internet pornography on the developing brain of a child.

Families have brought in their children to our clinic, boys and girls, ages 6-11, who were addicted to internet pornography. By addicted, I mean they were “hooked” after one or two exposures to pornography and would go to great lengths to gain access. For example, one little girl was getting in trouble at school for stealing iPhones from women’s purses to gain access to pornography and acting out the scenes she had seen on an infant sibling. An 11-year-old boy who could not get access to pornography at home was breaking into a neighbor’s home in the middle of the night to access their computer. These were good kids from good homes whose developing brains had been hijacked by a highly addictive and traumatizing material. Their parents also noted that their children were “different” in that they had become unable to bond, had normalized views about sexual violence against others, and their personalities had become eerily flat.

At the same time I was working with these families, three trafficking survivors were referred to me, two of whom were forced to create pornography. At another point in my career, I also worked with a court appointed sex buyer/pedophile who had been addicted to pornography since age 5 and who told me that pornography use had shaped his attitudes and taste for underage girls. I began to research the patterns I was witnessing and discovered that these were not isolated cases at all but were a microcosm of a quickly growing epidemic in our society. My eyes opened to the intersectionality of all forms of sexual exploitation and the direct and indirect role of illegal hardcore pornography.

Despite what people often assume, hardcore pornography is legal obscenity and is not protected free speech, however, our federal obscenity laws are not currently being enforced, leaving our community vulnerable to its often-devastating effects.

The Alabama Resolution to Declare Pornography a Public Health Crisis is a critical piece of legislation and it has passed with nearly unanimous bipartisan support in 15 other states.

Research backs up my own experiences. Numerous neuroscience-based studies have revealed the potentially harmful effects of pornography on the brain, in particular, the developing brain of children and adolescents. Today’s mainstream pornography is no longer the softcore centerfold of past decades but is child-, incest-, and rape-themed, hardcore, violent, highly degrading material. Exposing a child to this material can have traumatic effects and is tantamount to a form of child sexual abuse.

Today’s hardcore pornography is also driving the demand for trafficked women and children. Internet pornography is shown to normalize the notion that women are sex objects to be used and men are users. Over 35 studies link pornography use to “un-egalitarian attitudes” toward women and sexist views. As Internet forums for people struggling with pornography addiction attest, pornography use can escalate to fetishes and compulsive sexual behaviors such as purchasing prostituted women or children for sex. Buying people for sex fuels the commercial sex trade, and is the reason why sex trafficking exists.

Just as smoking was once normalized as neutral or healthy by physicians in the media and its harms once covered up by misinformation, we are experiencing an unacknowledged public health crisis which is having irreparable effects on the lives of individuals, families, and society-at-large. It is time for our state to wake up and address these serious issues so that this generation of children has a chance at a life of freedom, dignity, and healthy intimacy.

Melea Stephens is a practicing marriage and family therapist, founder of the Rescue Innocence Movement, and a board member of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.