Resolved: Prostitution should be legalized

We've now reached the end of this debate. I'll just do some quick summaries. I think there are three key questions that we need to be asking ourselves at this point:1) Will prostitutes be safer? My opponent agrees that people will be prostitutes, and buy prostitutes, whether it is illegal or not. The question is whether you can make a prostitute safer. I gave a number of mechanisms. First, they feel safer because they have fewer threats, the police having been eliminated as a threat. Second, the police are able to protect them from other threats. Third, other threats are less likely to target prostitutes due to police and possible resulting legal action. Fourth, they are able to support each other better and help each other out if one prostitute is either being unsafe or recovering from being unsafe. A subpoint here is that they avoid pregnancy. Fifth, they are better able to get support from their families, who they do not fear going to the police. Sixth, you can put in place standards to ensure safety, just like for other professions. Con had one response. I agreed prostitutes would still not be absolutely secure. The point is, though, that this is no reason to keep it banned, any more so than it is a reason to ban truck driving. While it doesn't completely resolve the problem, it does serve to mitigate the harms. Related to this was his point that this is premised on assumptions, that research and empirical evidence might not hold true in the real world, or that the new sources he brings out in the last round conflict it. At the end of the day, everything is premised on assumptions, all evidence has its roots in empiricism, nothing may hold true in the real world tomorrow for all we know, and anybody can write anything on the internet. We have to go on the best information we have available to us. Right now it's all pointing towards prostitutes being safer.2) Will more or less prostitutes be trafficked? Recall that we all agreed this was bad. So when are police best able to solve human trafficking crimes - when they're chasing prostitutes or when they're chasing traffickers? Prostitutes are not victims. They are people making a legitimate and often empowering choice about how they want to live their lives. Those who are forced into it are the victims. Those who are smuggled are the victims. At no point in this debate has my opponent managed to prove the problem of human trafficking is WORSE when it's illegal to be a prostitute. That's what he needed to do to win this point. As it stands, I think my counter-analysis from the first round that trafficking will be stamped out through legalisation is quite strong.3) Is it consistent with the role of the state? My opponent argues that pornography should be legal because it's not always bad, but he doesn't apply that same standard to prostitution - not all exchange of money or sex is bad. My opponent extends this by arguing both pornography and prostitution are immoral. Personally, I agree. But it's not up to us to decide. The state should still be consistent with its other laws, and since we're not debating those other laws, it's only reasonable that we do what is consistent with those other laws in this debate. There were a number of peripheral points still lingering here that might warrant another discussion another time, but I feel that generally these two points demonstrate the crux of the issues we considered.