Should prostitution be legalised

From back alleys to Backpage. Demand Abolition is eradicating the illegal commercial sex industry in the US—and, by extension, the world—by combating the demand for purchased sex. The most efficient approach to ending sexual exploitation is targeting sex buyers: when they stop buying, the entire system of degradation collapses. The idea that legalizing or decriminalizing commercial sex would reduce its harms is a persistent myth. Many claim if the sex trade were legal, regulated, and treated like any other profession, it would be safer.

Thus goes the common refrain whenever the topic of decriminalizing sex work arises. Writer Damon Linker argued in The Week :. I tried this experiment and discovered that I do not like to imagine my family members having sex of any kind, paid or unpaid. However, I do not have a daughter. But, then, as Elizabeth Nolan Brown points out, the people making this argument do not necessarily have daughters , either. So, here is a brief list of professions I would not want my fictitious daughter to enter into:. Professionally playing any sport that involves head trauma.

LONDON Thomson Reuters Foundation - Sex workers in countries where selling or buying sex is illegal are more likely to face violence, not use condoms and contract HIV, researchers said on Tuesday, calling for prostitution to be decriminalized. Nations have been divided over the best way to deal with prostitution. Many outlaw it; some, including Canada and Sweden, punish clients and others, like Germany and New Zealand, legalized it or decriminalized it entirely.

Decriminalising all aspects of prostitution — including brothel-owning and sex-buying — will, according to this argument, make life safer for these women, and also make it easier to root out abuse. Decriminalising the selling of sex — so that only buyers are breaking the law — means prostitutes themselves are not penalised. But even where only the buying of sex is a criminal offence, it is argued, prostituted women are forced to take risks. In recent years this argument has made big advances.