Prostitution ought to be legalized

Do women have the agency to decide for themselves whether or not they are willing to accept money for the sex acts required? This is not a rhetorical question- I expect an answer from my opponent. If she says yes, then that means that I win this debate, as it is simply a voluntary market transaction, making it victimless, and she has greatly weakened her case. If she says no, then congratulations, she has just claimed that half of the world’s population is incapable of making decisions for themselves. It is important to note, however, that the “no” answer is the logical conclusion to be drawn from her case. She’s claiming that women shouldn’t be able to decide for themselves what they do with their own bodies, which they have full ownership over, because she personally sees it as bad. So it is important to attack my opponent’s argument for what it really is- a case for why women should decide against being prostitutes, but not for why it should be illegal. She says that the woman’s body is commodified once money enters the equation. That’s true, but this goes back to my original point about self-sovereignty. At a fundamental level, before we own anything else, we own ourselves, and we have ownership over our own bodies. When you own something, you have every right to make money off of it. Maybe a woman shouldn’t become a prostitute, but that line of reasoning is non-topical and is no reason to legally restrict a woman’s ability to be a prostitute, especially given the fact that she has rights that ought to be respected. And of course, that all goes back to the patriarchal view that some people ought to be able to forbid women from doing what they want to with their own bodies because they morally oppose what those women do with their own bodies. So to go down that road, if a prostitute were to engage in sex for money with a man, what effect would that have on my opponent? What effect would that have on the readers of this debate? It would have absolutely none, because this is simply a voluntary transaction between consenting parties, much like any other market transaction. Essentially what this means is that no matter what moral opposition one may have against prostitution, it gives no real reason to make it illegal, because nobody is harmed based on what the prostitute and customer decided to do. This being said, much of my opponent’s logic holds, but only insofar as it means that women should largely decide against prostitution. What is important to remember here, however, is that the law is not the women. The law should not decide for the women what they ought to do, because the law should understand the fundamental fact that these individual women are more than capable of deciding for themselves what they want to do with their own bodies. Additionally, my opponent acts as though keeping prostitution illegal will eliminate prostitution. In my previous round’s intro, I pointed that out as a fallacious assumption- regardless of whether or not prostitution is legal, prostitution is still going to be a large industry. The only real difference with regards to physical consequences when prostitution is made legal is that women now have a safer environment to work in when they decide to work in the legal sector. Rapes are now actually punished, and STD spread is reduced. To refute my point about rape punishment, my opponent claims that making it legal would still discourage rape reporting, as the rape reporting would reduce the prostitute’s market value. While that could potentially be true, it will still lead to substantially more rape reporting because a disincentive was removed. With prostitution being illegal, prostitutes will not report their rapes because they do not want to risk punishment. Legalizing prostitution removes that risk of punishment, making it so the most substantial disincentive against rape reporting is now a moot point, and that some rapists will actually be held accountable for their crimes, making prostitute rape less likely. To refute my point about STD spread, my opponent tries to claim that the contention relied on the complete removal of illegal prostitution, which is simply not true. If even just a quarter of the industry were regulated, then the spread of STDs would go down. The majority of the industry, however, would now be legal, would be regulated, and would therefore mean that we would have a reduction of STD spread. Additionally, my opponent’s rationale for how getting the majority of the market regulated would lead to the illegal sector increasing is not explained. I would ask her to explain why next round, because that runs totally counter to common sense. To address my point about political/economic costs, she simply argues that “If prostitution causes widespread exploitation, rape, violence and viscious crimes against humanity- tax dollars should definitely be used to stop it. That is what we pay tax for, for the safety of our citizens.” That’s great, and I could totally get on board with that- if it were true that prostitution causes “widespread exploitation, rape, violence, and vicious crimes against humanity.” This is an instance where the prohibition of the act is exactly what makes those things happen. It makes rape happen more often because it makes it punishable for a prostitute to report her rape. It makes violence more common because the prostitute cannot report her boss or customers for being abusive towards her. And I would say that it is a vicious crime against humanity to claim that half of the world’s population is incapable of making decisions for themselves over what they fundamentally own. In legalizing prostitution, we actually reduce those problems, because remember, prostitution is not going to stop regardless of its legal status. However, we can’t regulate it unless it’s legal, and if we can regulate it, we can make it safer. So to sum all that up, if legalizing prostitution actually reduces or solves for those problems, it seems like it would make sense, by my opponent’s logic, to legalize it. And why not make some money on it to pay for valuable services like education or healthcare, rather than just punish people who really shouldn’t be punished? We can make it safer for the prostitutes and the customers by regulating it, so to answer the original question posed in the debate, which was “should people be punished for this action that they do anyway?” it seems pretty basic that the answer would be a resounding “No.” They have ownership over their bodies, so they have every right to exchange money for sex. We can reduce rape by making it something that actually has the potential to be punished, and, in legalizing prostitution, we can actually make it a safe environment for them, instead of an environment run by violent pimps, policemen, and customers. We can make it an environment where a prostitute can switch her place of employment without fear of violence by angry pimps, therefore giving her control over her situation. Additionally, it leaves low-skills women with a higher paying path than a minimum wage job, meaning that if she so desires, she does not have to be restricted to the minimum wage job option, as she had been before. That point was left completely unaddressed by my opponent, and that should be noted by the voters. So to sum this up, my opponent gives a lot of lovely reasons for why a woman should decide against being a prostitute, but they really just don’t hold up as reasons for why prostitution should be illegal. I, however, have all of the impacts on my side. I have a reduction of rape, violence, and STD spread. I have women’s ability to make choices for themselves on my side. She has her “moral high ground.” I believe it is clear which side of this debate would make an actual positive change for society.Thank you to Cermank and the readers, and I look forward to the next round.