ibweezal's Blog

PRO:

Proponents of legalizing prostitution believe it would reduce crime, improve public health, increase tax revenue, help people out of poverty, get … off the streets, and allow consenting adults to make their own choices. They contend that prostitution is a victimless crime, especially in the 11 Nevada counties where it remains legal. Opponents believe that legalizing prostitution would lead to increases in sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS, global human trafficking, and violent crime including … and homicide. They contend that prostitution is inherently immoral, commercially exploitative, empowers the criminal underworld, and promotes the repression of women by men. The … Education Network wrote in its "rostitution Act of 1996" provided on its website (accessed Jan. 16, 2009):

"No person's human or civil rights should be violated on the basis of their trade, occupation, work, calling or profession. No law has ever succeeded in stopping prostitution. Prostitution is the provision of sexual services for negotiated payment between consenting adults. So defined, prostitution is a service industry like any other in which people exchange skills for money or other reward...

Non-consenting adults and … forced into sexual activity (commercial or otherwise) deserve the full protection of the law and perpetrators deserve full punishment by the law.

Workers in the sex industry deserve the same rights as workers in any other trade, including the right to legal protection from crimes such as sexual harassment, sexual abuse and …

There are some unscrupulous people in all walks of life -government, law, journalism, banking, law enforcement, the stock exchange, medicine, the clergy, prostitution, etc. If every profession were criminalized when some of its members broke the law, there would be few legally sanctioned professions. Unscrupulous people should be summarily dealt with by the law, regardless of which profession they corrupt."

CON:

Cecilia Hoffman, Secretary of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women - Asia Pacific (CATW-AP), wrote in the Aug. 1997 paper "SEX: From Human Intimacy to 'Sexual Labor' or Is Prostitution a Human Right?" published on the CATW-AP website:

"rostitution violates the right to physical and moral integrity by the alienation of women’s sexuality that is appropriated, debased and reduced to a commodity to be bought and sold.

It violates the prohibition of … and of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment because clients’ acts and practices of sexual 'entertainment' and pornography are acts of power and violence over the female body.

It violates the right to liberty and security, and the prohibition … of forced labor and of trafficking in persons because millions of women and girls all over the world are held in … to meet the demand of even more millions of male buyers of sex, and to generate profits for the capitalists of sex.

It violates the right to enjoy the highest standard of physical and mental health because violence, disease, unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and AIDS stalk, presenting constant and grave risks for women and girls in prostitution, and militating against a healthy sense of and relationship with their own bodies."

What are your thoughts? Are women or men that choose to be … being violated as the CON listed above or, since it's their choice to be such, should they have the same legal rights and protection as any other industry?