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San Francisco Supervisor Hillary Ronen is right. California should debate legalization of sex work.

February 25, 2023

San Francisco Supervisor Hillary Ronen has generated some headlines in recent weeks for calling on state lawmakers to consider the legalization and regulation of prostitution in California.

Prompting Ronen was an increase in prostitution activity on Capp Street in the city, where Ronen notes prostitution has gone on “for decades, if not a century.” Despite increases in police activity in the area, prostitution and related activity — including violent attacks on sex workers by pimps, and noise issues — have become pronounced.

“None of these strategies deal with the underlying issues and reality that sex work happens in San Francisco and everywhere in the world,” she said in a Feb. 15 statement. “It is time to recognize this and move towards decriminalization and ultimately legalization and regulation of sex work.”

Ronen notes this approach has been used in the United States (in parts of Nevada, for example) and in countries around the world.

“In most instances, legalization helps combat trafficking, improves working conditions for sex workers, reduces violence against sex workers, and makes it easier to stop underage and unhealthy practices in this line of work,” she argues.

To her point, Human Rights Watch notes that, around the world, criminalization of sex work makes sex workers more vulnerable to crimes by pushing them underground, deterring their willingness to report crimes against them out of fear of repercussions from the police. Decriminalizing prostitution, Human Rights Watch argues, “maximizes sex workers’ legal protection and their ability to exercise other key rights, including to justice and health care.”

However, Ronen’s statements also drew some notable rebuttals, including from multiple-time gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger.

Among other arguments, Shellenberger argued on Twitter and in his Substack, that “sex trafficking increased in Germany upon legalization, according to one quantitative study of 150 countries, a correlation that holds for countries across the globe that legalize prostitution.” This would suggest that talk of legalizing prostitution is a terrible idea because it might lead to sex trafficking, which is definitionally coercive and horrific.

But there’s a problem with Shellenberger’s line of argument.

First, the underlying 2012 study he’s referencing warned their key finding about trafficking “needs to be subjected to future scrutiny” and “will require the collection of more reliable data to establish firmer conclusions.” They also go on to acknowledge in the study that even if their findings are true, “such a line of argumentation overlooks potential benefits that the legalization of prostitution might have on those employed in the industry. Working conditions could be substantially improved for prostitutes — at least those legally employed — if prostitution is legalized.”

Ronald Weitzer, a professor emeritus of sociology at George Washington University in Washington who has extensively studied prostitution, has further noted that the authors of the study used flawed data to draw their conclusions on trafficking. Indeed, their analysis on trafficking was based on a 2006 United Nations report that warned “the data collected and presented in this report should be interpreted with the utmost caution and not be viewed as a simple unbiased measure of the extent of the problem of human trafficking. … Caution is also advised at negatively interpreting the human trafficking situation in those countries for which more information is currently available.”

In other words, Shellenberger’s argument that legalization of prostitution is responsible for higher levels of trafficking is a poorly supported claim at best.

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Weitzer, who has long written about prostitution, has pointed to government reports from countries like the Netherlands and Australia suggesting that legalization in their countries makes sex trafficking easier to detect and therefore less likely. Weitzer has also been keen to point out, for the anti-sex work hysterics out there, that since 1971 there have been legal brothels in parts of Nevada. The sky has not fallen there.

While a coalition of puritanical right-wingers, some feminists who deny voluntary sex work is even possible and people who simply find the idea of prostitution objectionable is sure to push back on Ronen’s call, in the end, she’s right. Let adults make choices for themselves. Prohibition of consensual, victimless activity is a fool’s errand that does more harm than good.

Sal Rodriguez can be reached at [email protected]

Orange County Register

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San Francisco Supervisor Hillary Ronen is right. California should debate legalization of sex work.

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