Legalized Prostitution

THW Legalise Prostitution.I’m thankful for such a good topic and a great debater in this online debate on whether prostitution should be legalised or not.To begin with I’d like to say that prostitution is a natural outcome of any normal society. Prostitution is when a person sells sexual services to another person. It is natural then for some people, who may have increased libido, to want to have a profession in which they do something they enjoy. But prostitution is often something that people are coerced to do, physically or economically. 89% of prostitutes say they are doing prostitution as a means to an end.What we bring forward is not only legalisation of prostitution but also extensive funding into police and investigatory authorities that can stop uncertified and illegal prostitution.So in legalising prostitution will the status quo be improved?Let us first examine this status quo. Prostitutes suffer from physical abuse. 82% of San Francisco prostitutes have said they have suffered violence e.g. kicked, punched, slapped or raped. Different studies have a range from about 60% to 93% of prostitutes having suffered from violence. On average a prostitute is beaten 12 times a year.Prostitutes suffer from psychological abuse. 78% of sex workers reported having experienced emotional or psychological abuse in their career. Prostitutes have the highest mortality rate at 459 per 100,000 prostitutes dying, with an estimated 204 of these being murders. The average career length of prostitution is between 3 – 7 years. Through this we can see prostitutes live a very bleak life. But will legalising prostitution actually help the prostitutes or will it be detrimental to both prostitutes and society as a whole.STI’sFirst, we can look at con’s first point of how STI’s such as HPV and HIV take a long time to show up and so the infections can be passed on during the brace period. You begin with a solemn description of HPV and how there is an incubation period of 3 – 20 months and can be passed on by others during that period. But HPV takes 10 – 15 years to become cancerous and before this period pap tests and HPV tests can find the pre-cancerous cells and remove them. This means that by legalising prostitution you can be able to test prostitutes who may have HPV on the top layers and be able to stop it before it becomes a major health risk to the prostitute. In this way you can save the life that would have been lost if you were to not do anything in the first place. This is just one example, 95 – 100% of prostitutes have been recorded to have had either chlamydia, herpes or gonorrhoea with up to 50% recorded to have had syphilis. So what we can do by legalising prostitution is stop these diseases that are the true horrors that prostitutes face in relation to STI’s.However, HIV is of course life threatening. But I ask con one question, would you rather have a prostitute who contracted HIV recently to spread HIV for 12 weeks and then be detected and have relevant health professionals help them to allow them to have a better life, or the prostitute to maintain HIV for the rest of her career as a prostitute and keep spreading the infection to others. By no means is it flawless, but it is markedly better than the status quo.So we can see that on the health front, legalising helps which makes sense as the World Health Organisation encourages legalisation as it increases condom usage and decreases spread of STI’s (who I think are more reliable than Jeffery J. Barrows (who works at the CHRISTIAN Medical Association which gives the idea that maybe he’s just against prostitution due to moral beliefs))Sex TraffickingGoing into con’s second point on human trafficking and would legalising it increase human trafficking or not. I would like to start by saying that his example of the Netherlands has been reportedly described to be a completely economically driven policy with 5% GDP in sex workers; ‘women are beaten and forced to sit in icy water to avoid bruising. They also were tattooed’. So to con I can only feel sorry for the Dutch prostitutes however progress is being made, 239 brothels have been closed in the past 12 years and authorities are tightening up.However, the case of Netherlands, the home of prostitutes since even the Middle Ages, is truly the exception.Let us bring to light the case of New Zealand. In 1990, illegal sex workers from Thailand were common and a serious problem. However, by 2012, a study found ‘no evidence of recent trafficking of female sex workers’. In New Zealand’s case strict authorities and legalised prostitution has stopped trafficking (the last case was in 2006 where 8 people were charged).What proposition brings to you is ‘liberal laws juxtaposed with rigid controls’. Many researchers have agreed it is not the law of legalising prostitution but the economic orientation that take authorities away from the fact it needs to be controlled extensively. Simply asking for taxes by pimps causes con to have many sources to cite about increased sex trafficking.Illegal ProstitutionCon’s third point is simply a long quote from a heavily biased website which gives us 10 reasons to not legalise prostitution (which I’m sure he’ll cite in later rounds). What we have is a situation in which authorities are not given enough resources to be able to help prostitutes and as the proposition we are not only introducing legalised prostitution but also increased police funding in the area of investigating illegal prostitution. Police officers have said they have ‘limited ability to enter brothels to meet with women and to check for trafficked women and girls’ and senior police officials have admitted that regulation of brothels are ‘often woeful’.It is not the law that is flawed but instead the mechanism that is being used in some areas.The ProstituteThe main priority for a state should be to protect all the citizens of its state. The main stakeholder in prostitution is the prostitute. Economics, ethics, morals all come after.The society we live in has become so heavily stigmatised to the extent that prostitutes are seen as sub-human and basic human rights are often ignored, even by authorities. What the aim of the debate should be is if the motion will help or hinder a prostitute’s life.Previously, I showed you how by legalising prostitutes is good for health of all. But I would also like to address the situation of physical and psychological violence that prostitutes receive which I believe are caused by 1 main reason, social stigma.The clients of prostitutes do not see prostitutes in a humane manner. Their response to rape is ‘they were asking for it’ and they are objectified to an extent that makes lingerie models look like scholars. Even prostitutes do not see themselves as being worth anything and so are often the victims to suicide, overdoses and chronic alcoholism. With such a low self-esteem, girls often victim to child abuse and molestation turn to prostitution. So how does legalising prostitution affect social stigma. Immediately, it does very little/almost nothing. However, in the long term we can start to turn stereotypes; people won’t respect prostitutes like academics/authors, but they’ll respect them like people. They’ll respect them enough to see rape as rape, to see abuse as abuse, and to help them as fellow human beings. Prostitutes will have the courage to speak up to authorities, authorities will have the decency to help and investigate fully into cases of sex trafficking, violence and abuse. Legalising prostitution is by no means perfect, but it is the first step. The first step to a better more accepting society. A society that will see prostitutes as humans first.For these reasons I beg you to propose.http://www.virusmyth.com...http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...https://en.wikipedia.org...Can't fit all my sources in!