Legalizing Prostitution Argumentative Analysis

Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual relations in exchange for financial gain, food, drugs, rent or other material goods. Prostitution is described as commercial sex. Depending on the type, prostitution can be legal or illegal. Prostitution comes in different forms. These are street prostitution, massage parlours, strip clubs, phone sex, pornography, and domestic and international trafficking. In the UK, prostitution itself is not illegal but there are a number of offences linked to it like it is an offence to control a prostitute for gain. On the 1 June 2015 prostitution was illegalised in Northern Ireland to stop women being paid to have sex. Prostitution can be done in many ways such as massage parlours, sauna and street prostitution. This essay will discuss the reasons for prostitution being legalised.
One argument for legalising prostitution is prostitutes are not committing a harmful act.
This is because sex work is a choice and it can protect women from abuse and violence. This will happen because prostitutes are not likely to report abuse and violence to the authorities when it happens but if we legalise it, it can give women more rights and encourage them to seek help if any violence or abuse happens to them. If it were legalised then a women could call the police for help if they need it. Also what adults do behind closed doors, whether they pay for it or not, is no concern of the state.
The argument against this is that prostitution is violence towards prostitutes. Regardless of prostitution's status legal or illegal or its physical location strip club, massage parlour, street, escort/home/hotel, prostitution is extremely dangerous for women. Homicide is a frequent cause of death. It is not true to suggest that legalization will protect anyone in prostitution. It is not possible to protect someone whose source of income exposes them to the likelihood of being raped on average once a
week.
Another argument for legalizing prostitution is it would make sex workers healthier. If the government will legalize the sale and purchase of sexual services, it would substantially reduce the number of cases regarding STDs and more importantly, make all sex workers healthier. Once legalized, we can require every sex worker to use condoms and be medically examined regularly for HIV and other related diseases to protect them and avoid causing of widespread health problems. This will not be hard to do because what sex workers want is money and not disease and keeping it illegal would mean prostitutes might not use protection and not go to get tested for sexual transmitted diseases. HIV among sex workers could significantly be reduced by around 33-46 percent if prostitution were decriminalized in a study from austalia.
However an argument against this is that prostitution is it does not fully prevent the spread of sexual transmitted diseases. In countries where prostitution is legal, despite educating prostitutes the importance of using a condom, many prostitutes report that customers become violent if they ask to use a condom. Research in India has shown that prostitutes who insist on the use of condoms lose, on average, almost 80% of their income showing that they couldn’t make it as a career. Not only that but the worst of the common sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS does not show up in blood tests for an extended period of at least 4-6 weeks. This means that a prostitute who becomes infected can test as clear for a long period of time and yet be infectious.
Another argument for legalizing prostitution is it could help us fight against human-trafficking. The key benefit of legalizing the buying and selling of sex is it can create a good relationship between the law enforcement officials and sex workers. If there’s a good relation between them, law officials can use sex workers as key information sources to detect human trafficking cases. Opposite to what many people believe, legalisation of prostitution only provide cover to human traffickers because it gives them the power to use the law to threaten women victims, particularly the young ones. Women, who are being forced into prostitution, are afraid to go to police because they think that, they too, will be punished and arrested. If legal, women victims will become more willing to come forward and report traffickers, abusive clients to the law officials.
The argument against this is that prostitution is that we will never succeed in combating trafficking in women if we do not simultaneously work to abolish prostitution and the sexual exploitation of women. Particularly in light of the fact that many women in prostitution in countries that have legalised prostitution are originally victims of trafficking in women. Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The effect of legal prostitution on human trafficking inflows is stronger in high-income countries than middle-income countries.
In conclusion I do not think prostitution should be legalized because it does not protect prostitutes as not everyone will wear a condom which means them and the clients will be exposed to potential life threatening diseases like AIDS and HIV. Another reason I don’t think prostitution should be legalised is that it will not help with getting rid of human trafficking as it has been proved that if prostitution is legal countries have higher trafficking rates. A final reason I don’t think prostitution should be legalised is that it will increase violence towards women as they are exposed to it every week.
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Sources
http://www.listland.com/top-10-reasons-prostitution-legalized/ http://prostitution.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000115 http://www.debatingeurope.eu/focus/arguments-legalising-prostitution/#.WEqRdjLcuig