Would Legal Prostitution Decrease Sexually Transmitted Diseases?
PRO (yes)
Pro
Avert, an organization specializing in HIV education, in an Aug. 29, 2017 resource titled “Sex Workers, HIV and AIDS,” available from avert.org, wrote:
“It is argued that legalizing or decriminalizing sex work is beneficial to curbing the HIV epidemic because it allows governments to monitor and regulate the sex trade. In doing so, they can ensure that sex workers are empowered to negotiate condom use, improve their access to public services, and protect them from violence and abuse. Where sex workers are criminalized, they can be difficult to reach or unwilling to cooperate for fear of being arrested. By removing legal restrictions, HIV prevention programs could be carried out much more effectively.
Research evidence supports this argument. An analysis of data from 27 European countries found that in countries that have legalized some aspects of sex work there is a significantly lower HIV prevalence among sex workers compared to those countries where all aspects of sex work are criminalized.”
Aug. 29, 2017
Pro
Sandra Ka Hon Chu, LLM, Director of Research and Advocacy at the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, and Steffanie Strathdee, PhD, Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences at the University of California at San Diego, in an interview for the July 22, 2014 cbc.ca article titled “AIDS Conference Told Legalizing Prostitution a Simple Way to Curb HIV,” stated:
[Sandra Ka Hon Chu]: “When you’re driven to isolated areas because of policing, because your clients are being arrested, it’s harder for you to negotiate condom use, harder for you to insist on safer sex or even discuss what you want to do in advance…Where criminal laws have actually been removed, rates of HIV and sexually transmitted infection are very, very low, rates of condom use are very, very high, and sex workers as a whole feel very empowered to insist on safer sex with their clients.”
[Steffanie Strathdee]: “We’ve shown that up to 46 per cent of incident HIV infections could be averted in any of the three cities [in Canada, India, and Kenya] we examined by just fully decriminalizing prostitution.” July 22, 2014
Pro
Bebe Loff, LLB, PhD, Head of the Human Rights and Bioethics Unit in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at Monash University, Beth Gaze, LLB, LLN, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Monash, and Christopher Fairley, PhD, Director of the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, wrote in the Nov. 18, 2000 The Lancet article “Prostitution, Public Health, and Human-Rights Law” that:
“Prostitutes overwhelmingly work outside the law. This has implications for their health that are hard to quantify. In one Australian study carried out in 1998, the prevalence of sexually transmitted bacterial infections was 80 times greater in 63 illegal street prostitutes than in 753 of their legal brothel counterparts… Legally sanctioned encouragement of prostitutes to use condoms or access screening services, both major determinants of the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases, is impossible because of their illegal status. Occupational health and safety law is applied to prostitutes in lawful brothels but not to their counterparts on the street.”
Nov. 18, 2000
Pro
Teela Sanders, DPhil, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Leeds, in the May 2006 Social Science & Medicine article “Female Sex Workers As Health Educators With Men Who Buy Sex,” wrote:
“For too long there has been an assumption in the literature that because sex workers have multiple sexual partners they are automatically a health risk rather than framing the possibility that their access to a hard to reach population of male clients could present a gateway for information transfer and behaviour change…
The evidence of the legalised brothel system in Nevada highlights that sex work environments that are legitimated and bureaucratised have the effect of empowering sex workers to control their working conditions and interactions with clients. A legalised system that shared the responsibility for safe sexual practices with male clients and management as well as sex workers could facilitate the role of health education both informally and formally… Only when the place of prostitution in society is not considered the plight of the immoral or destitute, but a fixed feature of sexual behaviour, will policy move from the tone of moral disapproval or public nuisance to a realistic perspective that facilitates the provision of safe sexual services as work.”
May 2006
CON (no)
Con
Laila Mickelwait, MPD, President and Founder of New Reality International, in a Mar. 24, 2015 article for exoduscry.com titled “Myth vs. Fact: 6 Common Myths About Prostitution and the Law,” wrote:
“[U]nder laws that legalize and try to regulate prostitution, health check cards are often given to women. In theory, the cards can be presented to buyers as proof that the women have been tested and are disease free. Under these same laws, the buyers are never required to have health check cards to present to the women. This is a biased, sexist and unjust approach.
Even when the women are tested for medical conditions, the tests are unreliable and invalid because many tests take days or weeks before the results are available. During that time, the women see more men who could be infected…
Arguing that STD testing prevents disease is like arguing that pregnancy tests prevent pregnancy. It is a fundamentally flawed line of reasoning to begin with… The only way to truly protect the health of a prostituted woman is to GET HER OUT OF PROSTITUTION.”
Mar. 24, 2015
Con
Realistic, Equal, Active, for Life (REAL) Women of Canada, in its Mar.-Apr. 2005 Reality newsletter article “Prostitution In Canada and Other Countries,” wrote:
“In 1986, the Victorian Labour government [Victoria, Australia] legalized brothels, claiming crime would be eliminated, prostitutes’ lives would be made safer, and there would be fewer health risks. None of this happened…
Sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and AIDS increased. This was due to the fact that medical authorities examined only one of the partners in the sex act, which was self-defeating. Also, favourable medical results provided a false sense of security to clients, prostitutes and controllers. Medical examinations also provoked hostility and decreased cooperation from prostitutes who moved around too often to be monitored. If one did become infected with a sexually transmitted disease, another prostitute would replace her for the medical check up, using the infected woman’s medical card.”
Mar.-Apr. 2005
Con
Janice Raymond, PhD, former Co-Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), wrote in the 2003 Journal of Trauma Practice article “Ten Reasons for Not Legalizing Prostitution And a Legal Response to the Demand for Prostitution,” that:
“A legalized system of prostitution that mandates health checks and certification only for women and not for clients is blatantly discriminatory to women. Women only health checks make no public health sense because monitoring prostituted women does not protect them from HIV/AIDS or STDs, since male clients can and do originally transmit disease to the women.
It is argued that legalized brothels or other controlled prostitution establishments protect women through enforceable condom policies. In one of CATW’s studies, U.S. women in prostitution interviewed reported the following: 47% stated that men expected sex without a condom; 73% reported that men offered to pay more for sex without a condom; 45% of women said they were abused if they insisted that men use condoms. Some women said that certain establishments may have rules that men wear condoms but, in reality, men still try to have sex without them. One woman stated: It’s regulation to wear a condom at the sauna, but negotiable between parties on the side.”
2003
Con
Cheryl Edwardes, LLM, former Attorney General for Western Australia, in the May 6, 2003 Australian Legislative Assembly, said:
“The community may accept that some level of prostitution is inevitable. However, that does not mean supporting anything that might result in more brothels and more prostitutes. It certainly does not mean tacit endorsement of a system that could send a wrong message to young women that prostitution is a desirable career option… Words alone will not keep out the criminal element. Under this legislation [Prostitution Control Bill 2003], prostitution is to be legalised and more illegal brothels will operate, yet there is no indication in the legislation of how the Labor Government plans to ensure that STDs will not spread throughout the community. Simply talking about the dangers of unprotected sex will not stop it…
Condoms are not used 100 per cent of the time in the sex industry because there is a much lower percentage of use by street workers. Street workers have a greater dependence on drugs… Unsafe practices continue… [U]p to 50 per cent of brothel workers are undertaking oral sex without using prophylactics. The figure is quite concerning because STDs can be transmitted in that way.”
May 6, 2003
