The US should decriminalize prostitution

“The State of Nature, the natural condition of mankind, is a state of perfect and complete liberty to conduct one’s life as one best sees fit, free from the interference of others.” [1] From that starting point, the only reason people give up some of their freedom is to be protected from being harmed by others. This idea is captured by John Stuart Mill’s famous “harm principle,” which holds that each person must be afforded the right to exercise self-control over their own body and mind, and that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” [2]Thus, Mill drew an important distinction between “self-regarding acts” and “other-regarding acts.” The former involve doing things to yourself that don’t harm other people, though they may be self-destructive. The latter involve doing things that harm other people. Mill argued that government should never prohibit or interfere with the former, even if these choices are self-destructive. As such, the harm principle allows individuals all the freedom they want to pursue their own views of the good life—up to the point where an unwilling person could be harmed. Freedom ends only where the next person’s nose begins.Prostitution is a classic self-regarding act. If it harms anyone, it only harms those consenting to the act (i.e. sex workers or johns). In effect, it’s no different than most legal and consensual acts. Just as consensual possession of other people’s belongings is not theft, and consensual presence on other people’s premises is not trespass, and consensual sex isn’t rape, consensual exchange of sex for money shouldn’t be illegal. Under Mill’s harm principle, any argument for prohibiting or interfering with consensual acts that don’t harm anyone else is a non-starter.What are the arguments against legalizing prostitution? Opponents usually argue that (1) it's harmful to prostitutes, and (2) it increases sex trafficking. I'll respond to each of these in turn. First, under the harm principle, it doesn't matter if prostitution is harmful to prostitutes because there's no justification for interfering with self-regarding acts, even if those acts are self-destructive. Second, there's no evidence that sex work is inherently harmful. The only evidence showing harms is related to the institutions surrounding illegal prostitution. Decriminalization solves those problems because it creates an explicit distinction between legal sex work and illegal sex trafficking and rape. This helps police enforce sex trafficking and rape laws, while granting legal sex workers the freedom to use their body and mind as they see fit, without harming anyone else.In terms of sex trafficking, it's a huge topic with a lot to talk about, but at least this much isn't up for debate: trafficking is a profound crime that should be eradicated. But it's also an issue that requires much greater nuance than it's currently given. In the US, there's a distinction between really bad trafficking -- defined as "a commercial sex act induced by ford, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age" -- and just regular sex trafficking, defined as "the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act." In other words, "sex trafficking" is defined as consensual sex work by migrants. That's it. This distinction is critical. While the former is a profound crime, the latter is just another definition for sex work performed by migrants. This important point is often lost in debates about prostituion, as anti-trafficking and anti-prostitution discourse has blurred the line between these two categories. To be clear, "sex trafficking" as defined by the law is not synonymous with sexual servitude.That poses a serious problem for actual anti-trafficking efforts, because it misdirects funds away from genuine victims, and onto sex workers who simply visit friends in a different city. In actuality, decriminalizing prostitution helps combat sexual servitude, by keeping our focus on the stuff that's actually bad. In short, definitions are important. The sloppy and overly-broad definition of trafficking is the problem, not sex work itself. Moreover, there's no evidence whatsoever that decriminalizing prostitution increases sexual servitude. There's no evidence that decriminalizing prostitution increases the type of sex trafficking you see in movies like Taken. And that's all I'll say on the trafficking issue unless my opponent brings it up.Finally, there's an idea among opponents of prostitution that sex workers cannot consent to exchange sex for money. Why not? It's like any other job where you provide a service with the use of your body in exchange for money. There's nothing inherent about exchanging sex for money that makes consent impossible. To be sure, many prostitutes don't consent, but that's something that typically happens when prostitution is illegal. And, non-consensual sex is already covered under existing laws for rape, and sexual servitude is covered under the "severe sex trafficking" laws. Criminalizing prostitution is completely unnecessary. The US should decriminalize *consensual* prostitution.[1] http://www.iep.utm.edu...[2] https://en.wikipedia.org...[3] https://oag.ca.gov...