Giving Compass' Take:

• Sean Coughlan reports that pregnant modern slaves in the UK have specific needs around healthcare and emotional support that are not currently being met. 

• How can donors support people who are forced into this difficult situation? How can policy and philanthropy help protect people from becoming slaves? 

• Skoll Foundation shares insights into stopping the modern global slave trade. 

A quarter of women rescued from modern slavery in the UK are pregnant and facing "shocking" levels of danger and deprivation, says a charity.

Hestia, which runs safe houses, says pregnant women can escape or be abandoned by traffickers and left to sleep rough without any healthcare.

"Many contemplate suicide. All are isolated and long for contact with their mothers," says the study.

The charity says "urgent action" is needed to help such vulnerable women.

Hestia, one of the UK's biggest providers of support for victims of slavery, says there is insufficient help for the security, health and psychological needs of trafficked and often traumatized women who are pregnant or have recently given birth.

The charity, which last year worked with almost 900 adults, is to publish a report highlighting the "harrowing" risks facing enslaved pregnant women who have been living in "constant fear".

The report says that a "disproportionately high number of women who have been victims of modern slavery present into our service pregnant, often very late in their pregnancy".

These women, who could be held as sex workers or in domestic servitude, have often had no access to healthcare.

The report says some of the pregnancies were the result of rape, and women's health can be seriously damaged by being "forced to consume alcohol or take drugs whilst they were being exploited".

Read the full article on pregnant modern slaves by Sean Coughlan at BBC.