"...You would expect to see pregnancies given how many of these people were raped. Having covered the use of rape as a weapon of war in other theatres, including briefly in the Congo and in the Ivory Coast and Guinea, I knew that unwanted pregnancy is just one of the tragic and horrific side effects of this particular crime. So, at that point, I ended up seeking out the doctors that were treating the women. They said they, too, were puzzled by this.

"The main doctor who is in charge of the centre that is treating the majority of these women said to me that for months, he has been trying to figure out why the [pregnancy] rate is so much lower than it would be for just a woman having a normal sexual lifestyle with her partner...These are women who have had multiple partners, who were forced to have far more than the normal rate of sexual activity, and yet the reported [pregnancy] rate is less than 5%.

"Then, around the same time, the slavery manual that ISIS put out surfaced. It was a scholar at Princeton University, Cole Bunzel, who first identified it online and sent it to me. And in that manual, it very clearly states that this is just about the only prohibition to raping the slave, whether or not she is pregnant."

One thing that sticks out in your reporting is the fact that on the one hand, these women and girls are forced to take pills or injections without their consent. On the other hand, they are not being forced to bear their captor or attacker’s children. What are the feelings people have about this?

"The Shariah rules that ISIS was imposing on these slaves, which they were pointing to to justify their enslavement and their abuse, were obviously a source of great torment for these women — with the exception of this rule. This was the one rule where their wishes lined up with their captors’ intent. They feared, more than anything, falling pregnant with their rapist’s child. I think this would be the case for any women who is being held there, but in the Yazidi community, it’s even worse than I think it would be, certainly in our society, but even in the more conservative societies we know of. The Yazidis have a very strong code of sexual purity. The child that is born from the union of a Yazidi and a non-Yazidi is not considered to be part of their community. They are essentially non-Yazidi."