Regulating Prostitution: A Path to Safety and Dignity

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Prostitution is one of the oldest professions in history. In this modern age there are several classes of prostitutes with several methods of finding work, but they still face violence in their business. Though prostitutes are frowned upon by society and treated as criminals, under the law they should not be scrutinized by the morals of the people. Prostitutes frequently feel they have no options due to their illegal work, should they be assaulted they cannot turn to the police since many officers refuse to aid them as criminals. Prostitution should be regulated to fight human trafficking, increase quality of life for the women working in the industry, and generate taxes for the government while reducing the cost of dealing with prostitution. …show more content…

For instance, while every industry that operates in the US has labor rights associated with it, prostitutes have no guarantees in their work. No one has to provide a prostitute with “rights like a minimum wage, freedom from discrimination, and a safe work environment” (Fuchs). With regulations in place after decriminalizing the profession, prostitutes can be better protected against STIs. This could be accomplished by requiring “sex workers to use condoms and get tested for sexually transmitted diseases” (Fuchs). They will have a greatly decreased chance of contracting disease if they turn down clearly infected clients, and make all clients, whether clean or not, wear condoms. If they were working outside of the law they would feel less incline to do this and would then be at great risk for contracting disease. Illegal prostitutes actually have motives for not using condoms since in cities like New York, “cops were actually using condoms found on women as evidence in criminal prostitution cases against them” (Fuchs). This practice provides the perfect stage for STIs to go wild and spread like fire, with HIV being in the forefront and becoming an even larger epidemic then it is. Giving them labor rights will give them the ability to unionize and fight for their rights together, transferring the power in the business to the workers instead of their bosses, like pimps and brothel owners. With regulations eliminating the pimps, one source of violence is removed from the business. Customers are the other major source of violence and, with legalization, prostitutes would be able to rely on law enforcement to protect them instead of detaining them. Studies have found that among prostitutes “82% had been assaulted and 68% had been raped while working” (Fuchs) and “they were 18 times more likely to be murdered than non-prostitutes their age and race” (Fuchs). This could be

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