Resolved: Prostitution should be legalised

Premise 1I accept this definition. But it doesn't necessarily mean that there is consent involved from all parties - this is because people can be coerced, threatened or forced into prostitutional sex.Premise 2In round 2, I presented a cogent philosophical proof that the purpose of a democratic government is to serve the common good. I agree that laws exists to protect 'citizens' general safety and rights from external forces', but this is only an indirect method of ultimately serving the common good. Pro seems to imply that there shouldn't be a law against prostitution under this criterion, but I dispute this. A law against prostitution will 'protect citizen's general safety' for the exact reasons I elucidated in my first argument in Round 2. And whilst a single solicitation of a prostitute will have a negligible effect on other peoples' rights and safety, the widespread occurrence of prostitution contributes to an overall harmful effect on society and those within it.To use an analogy, shoplifting a chocolate bar will have a negligible effect on peoples' safety or rights, but if it happened frequently and went unpunished, then it would contribute to an overall negative effect. This is why shoplifting is illegal.Premise 3Whilst regulations exist in countries which have legalised prostitution, they have proved startlingly ineffectual and can even prove counterproductive:- Legalising prostitution changes rape, assault, violence and STIs from serious criminal and health problems to 'workplace occupational hazards'. (1) Which disguises serious crimes as health and safety concerns.- Legalisation in Nevada has seen 'rapes and assaults by customers [being covered up] by the management.' (2)- 'Legalisation actually makes it more difficult to prosecute rapists, perpetrators, and traffickers. Because the sex industries are more legitimised under legalisation, there is no basic presumption that buying or selling someone else"s body is a crime.' (3)Pro writes that the legalising prostitution would prevent STDs, but the evidence proves otherwise:- When Victoria, Australia, legalised brothels, STDs and AIDs actually increased, this is because testing only one of the two sexual partners is self-defeating as well as the factor that it creates a false sense of security to brothel owners as well as clients. Also, prostitutes often went to great lengths to avoid testing, even using false IDs and moving areas. (4)- An article within the World Journal of AIDs wrote that:'It is apparent that mandatory testing of HIV and STIs among sex workers in Australia has proven to be a barrier to otherwise successful HIV and STI peer education, prevention and free and anonymous testing and treatment. The outcomes of mandatory testing are counterproductive to reducing HIV and STI rates, do not reach the intended target group, are costly and inefficient' (5)- Pro writes that STD tests are required by law in Nevada, but this is no longer true (6).Therefore, as well as there being evidence that legalisation is correlated to an increase in STDs and AIDs (which stands to reason, since legal prostitution = more people having sex with prostitutes), the preventative measures have proved to be virtually useless. Condom use is good, but it cannot be realistically enforced; 73% of prostitutes reported that men offer to pay extra for sex without a condom and 45% of them said that men became abusive when asked to use a condom. (7) So even if mandatory condom use was introduced, it would probably do more harm than good by increasing the chances that a customer abuses the prostitute.Moreover, mandatory STD checks don't actually prevent prostitutes from getting STDs (just like checking for cancer doesn't stop someone getting cancer), all it does is protect the Johns by removing the infected prostitutes - it doesn't protect the prostitutes themselves.Pro states that:'Regulation has worked so well in Nevada, to the point where STDs are less likely among Nevada prostitutes than among California porn stars.'Which is a laughable statement; porn stars are already a high-risk group for STDs (they too have sex countless times every year with multiple people), so one cannot justifiably say that regulation has 'worked so well' by comparing prostitutes to yet another high-risk group. Regulation can only be called good enough if it reduces STD levels to around the national average.Premise 4Pro's first statement is that some prostitutes are too scared to inform the police of abuse, for fear of prosecution. But this is only an argument to decriminalise prostitutes (such as is the case in Sweden), it doesn't justify full-on legalisation. Hence this comment doesn't pertain to the resolution of the debate.Next, Pro writes:'rape decreased dramatically when rape was legal in Rhode Island.'Yet rape was never legal in Rhode Island.All-in-all, Pro is making the argument that if prostitution is legalised, rape would decrease. His Queensland study can simply be countered by the fact that Germany is the country with the most prostitution in Europe but also has a relatively high rape rate for an European country (8). All these contradicting correlations demonstrate is that there is no conclusive correlation between rape rates and prostitution. Pro's second study (this one --> [8]) is dubious; the correlation is a very weak one and is hardly conclusive. In fact, the scatter graph within the study showed that the majority of countries with low prostitution-availability also have low rape rates - the weak correlation is only hinted at by the extremes.Even if legalising prostitution would reduce rape convictions, it wouldn't reduce overall occurrences of rape because, technically, most prostitution is itself rape. In legalised places, this won't come under the statistics of 'rape' because prostitution is approved of by the government.So why is most prostitution actually rape? Well, any non-consensual sex is rape (9), and sex is only consensual if it is free from threats or coercion (10). However, 80% of Nevadan prostitutes want to leave prostitution (11) but many are prevented from leaving (ibid.) and it is made very difficult to refuse clients (12). It stands to reason that if 80% of prostitutes want to leave, but remain in the industry, they are remaining because of some form of threat or coercion. Since this does not constitute legal consent, prostitution is non-consensual and therefore rape. This is Nevada, where prostitution is legal - so Pro is incorrect in thinking that legalising prostitution will ensure that most prostitution is consensual. He states that a brothel 'could not abuse their employees', but Nevada has shown this to be false (13).Conclusion to Rebuttal of argument 1I have provided evidence that legal prostitution does not help mitigate STDs, nor improve the livelihoods of most prostitutes. Therefore, legalising prostitution will not help prostitutes.Premise 5 & Argument 2This argument contradicts Pro's earlier point about the purpose of laws; 'to protect citizen’s general safety and their rights'. As I have demonstrated that legalising prostitution would be harmful, the government cannot justifiably legalise it for monetary gain. The Government isn't serving the people if it harms the common good in order to make money. Pro's logic would also imply that the Government ought to legalise cocaine and heroine as well, since they would then be able to tax it and make money.Argument 3This argument is built upon the presupposition that prostitution is 'a crime which harms no one', which I have thoroughly refuted. Furthermore, this argument uses reasoning that would entail that we should legalise all non-serious crimes in order to focus on the serious ones - an absurd conclusion that would lead to a chaotic society.Defence of my argument #1P1I have no problem with accepting Pro's second premise, but as I have demonstrated, banning prostitution protects the safety and rights of people by protecting them from human trafficking as well as protecting the prostitutes themselves. Johns pump money into this harmful industry and hence, overall, are actually contributing to the harm. Ergo, the law against prostitution is justified.P2Sex tourism puts an intense demand on the country's sex industry, which prompts pimps to seek out new prostitutes, often having to resort to trafficking (which links into my second argument).My divorce point was just a conjecture, which postulates that prostitution could increase divorce, not that it necessarily does.Even if the causal link between drugs and prostitution is unknown, a startling correlation still exists. Pro writes that 'most prostitutes are poor, and drug abuse tends to be higher among poor people', but if this is the case, legalisation won't change this problem.Besides, even if I admit there are no societal harms of prostitution, it remains harmful to the prostitutes regardless of its legality, as I have already proved in both my round 2 and my attack of Pro's arguments.As I have defended both P1 and P2, C1 and therefore C2 also stand. My argument remains sound.Argument #2In Pro's impressive-looking calculation, he forgets to factor in the huge increase of numbers of prostitutes that would result from legalisation (making his 1 million figure increase to about 4 million). This extra 3 million prostitutes, of which ~80% will be raped, will far outweigh the supposed (and doubtful) assumption that legalising prostitution would reduce rape by 182,500 (25%).Therefore, Pro's calculation fails to show that the reduced rape rate would outweigh the human-trafficking increase, and so my argument stands._____________(1) http://bit.ly...(2) http://bit.ly...(3) http://bit.ly...(4) http://bit.ly...(5) http://bit.ly...(6) http://bit.ly...(7) http://bit.ly...(8) http://bit.ly...(9) http://bit.ly...(10) http://bit.ly...(11) http://bit.ly...(12) http://bit.ly...(13) http://bit.ly...