Legalizing Prostitution: The World's Oldest Profession

Prostitution has been known as “the world’s oldest profession” for a reason – it has been around since the beginning of time, and no matter how many legal bans the government imposes upon prostitution and related activities, it will never cease to exist. There will always be people willing and able to pay to get their sexual needs fulfilled, and the government, instead of spending money arresting sex workers and trying to regulate prostitution, should legalize it and enjoy the beneficial consequences. Legalizing prostitution would make sex workers healthier by giving them access to tests and treatments for STDs. It would also reduce the violence and sex crimes which sex workers, and even those who are not, are often victims of. And lastly, …show more content…
They examined data from 2003 until 2009, a few decades after the state of Rhode Island had accidentally legalized indoor prostitution, and found that “there were 31 percent or 824 fewer reported rapes and a decrease of approximately 2000 cases of gonorrhea during the seven years indoor prostitution was decriminalized” (Decriminalizing Prostitution Linked to Fewer STDs and Rapes, 2014). Although their study only used data from Rhode Island and cannot be applied to other states, it shows that there’s a quite strong relationship between legalization of prostitution and lower sex crime and STDs rates. As reported by Clements, in a “survey of street prostitutes in San Francisco, eighty percent reported being physically assaulted since entering prostitution, and two-thirds reported being raped in the course of their work” (Prostitution and the American Health Care System: Denying Access to a Group of Women in Need, 2013); those numbers are high mainly because prostitutes are afraid of being arrested if they report to the police, but legalizing prostitution would allow sex workers to seek for help and approach law enforcement officers if they felt they were in danger or had conflicts with their pimps and clients. They would also be able to have their own businesses, instead of …show more content…
According to David Goldman from Seton Hall Law School, legalization of prostitution would “allow for the taxation of both the prostitutes themselves and the houses of prostitution they work in” and that “taxation is a small price to pay in exchange for better working environments and safer conditions for the industry” (You Can’t Get Rid of It So You Might as Well Tax It: The Economic Impact