Prostitution should be legal.

Thanks for the debate. Introduction: Prostitution should not be legal for various reasons. My opponent and I still have to go through 4 rounds of debate. I will not lay out my entire argument in the first round of debate, as I am sure most of it will get lost along the way. "The average age of entry into prostitution is 13 years (M.H. Silbert and A.M. Pines, 1982, "Victimization of street prostitutes, Victimology: An International Journal, 7: 122-133) or 14 years (D.Kelly Weisberg, 1985, Children of the Night: A Study of Adolescent Prostitution, Lexington, Mass, Toronto). Most of these 13 or 14 year old girls were recruited or coerced into prostitution. Others were "traditional wives" without job skills who escaped from or were abandoned by abusive husbands and went into prostitution to support themselves and their children. (Denise Gamache and Evelina Giobbe, Prostitution: Oppression Disguised as Liberation, National Coalition against Domestic Violence, 1990)" [1] 1. Take this source as my first reason prostitution should not be legalized. I am fully aware that you believe sexual intercourse with an underage person should not be allowed. If we use some deductive reasoning, how many teenagers smoke before they are the age of 18 (the legal age to smoke). What about alcohol? If prostitution is legalized, it is highly likely that underage females from very low income areas will try to capitalize on an opportunity to make some money. It is very possible that they would lie about their age and begin a career in prostitution. I feel that this source is a good place to start the debate. Rebuttal to my opponents argument points: "Personally, it should be a fundamental right to have sex with whoever you want, whenever you want, and whichever way you want as long as both parties agree to the proceedings." -People already have the right to do this. No issue needs to be addressed there. "Some arguments against the legalization of prostitution are semi-valid, usually to the theme of health risks and such" -Health risks are a small part of the issues associated with prostitution. I prefer to look into the dramatic increase in physical abuse and sexual assaults that would create a much larger burden on law enforcement agencies across the United States. I will jump into those statistics in later arguments. Further, we will also talk about the high rate of victims of child molestation jumping into prostitution. We will also talk about how many drug addicts (meth, crack, heroin), quickly lose money and revert to prostitution as a means to finance another criminal offense. "Other arguments attempt to define prostitution as a moral issue by saying it's demeaning and should therefore be illegal" -Prostitution is very demeaning to women and is also immoral. However, I will address other issues associated with Prostitution. "That argument is like saying that if someone doesn't like a movie because he/she thinks it demeaning, then he/she can make it illegal to see that movie based on subjective value judgement" -First, this is not the greatest comparison in the world. Watching movies is absolutely nothing like prostitution. I will give my examples in upcoming arguments. "You should not enforce subjective morality onto others" -Are you suggesting we legalize all criminal behavior? My arguments will focus on the prostitutes as victims. When you encourage prostitution, a large percentage of females that will start prostitution will start at a very young age as my source identified earlier. How many people start smoking in their thirties? "Very little data about smoking is regularly collected for kids under 12, but the peak years for first trying to smoke appear to be in the sixth and seventh grades, or between the ages of 11 and 13, with a considerable number starting even earlier. In 2011, 6.1 percent of eighth grade students reported having had their first cigarette by fifth grade (ages 10"11), and 15.5 percent had tried smoking by eighth grade. More than half of twelfth graders who were current smokers had tried smoking by the end of ninth grade." [2] -As you can see in the source I provided, a large number of kids start smoking between the ages of 11 and 13. However the legal age to smoke tobacco is the age of 18. Prostitution carries a very similar path, and if we allow mere children to partake in prostitution so they can make money, we will fail young girls all across the United States. I await your response. [1] http://www.rapeis.org... [2] http://www.tobaccofreekids.org...