Besides promoting pornography and other illegal and criminal activities, prostitution definitely leads to the degradation and abuse of women. It is therefore not conducive to the development of safe and healthy society.

Prostitution, because of its present illegal status, is considered by many people as undesirable and bad, and that itself acts as a deterrent against it. For example, in many developing and poor countries, this works as a psychological barrier in the minds of even poor and underprivileged people. They thus are not easily swayed into it for making easy money for food and shelter, and their families (especially the young) are also spared from becoming victims of it.

On the other hand, if the prostitution had a legal status, it will be seen by many poor, underprivileged and illiterate people as having the official seal of approval and something to look forward to during need. All the taboos against it will be gone and people willingly, even enthusiastically, will take part in it to earn money.

Note that even though the present outright ban on prostitution is not foolproof and has many flaws, it is still better and easier to enforce and requires considerably less manpower (police and judges) and resources. On the other hand, if prostitution were legalized, monitoring and enforcing the controls on individual (separate) aspects of prostitution – such as the consent, health or age etc. of individual sex-workers and clients -- will be extremely difficult. It will also require too much manpower (police and judicial) and resources to keep things in check, especially where there are great many sex-workers and their customers scattered over large areas. In that case, it will be impossible to scrutinize and enforce all the requirements related to the legalized prostitution, especially in the poor and developing countries.

Furthermore, the governments, social agencies and groups will see little need to discourage people from the practice of prostitution, if legalized, and that kind of apathy on the part of authorities will be quite detrimental to the socio-economic uplift of prostitutes and their families.

Thus there is no advantage in legalizing the prostitution. It hardly has any positive points and only will add to the society’s woes. It most likely will lead to the further deterioration of condition of women (and even men), especially the under-aged and the unwilling. In addition, there will not be any motivation on the part of people and authorities to abandon this practice (having the legal status), and this attitude may lead to the flesh-trade even becoming a permanent and generational thing for some people and families to earn their living. Incidentally, important issues involving safety, health (e.g. HIV, AIDS and other STD’s) and economics etc. of people engaged in sex-trade currently need to be tackled by the authorities separately and independently without legalizing the prostitution.
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By: Dr. Subhash C. Sharma
Email: [email protected]
Date: Dec. 21, 2005

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