Amnesty International, the respected human rights group, has taken up a new cause: the legalization of prostitution world-wide.
Libertarians have long supported this, for, well, libertarian reasons. Now expect liberals to embrace this goal as a way of empowering women (which is how Amnesty International frames it). But would it really empower women? Wouldn’t this also, in effect, legalize human trafficking?
But this would be yet another step in our hypersexualized culture’s quest for total, unrestricted sexual license.
Here is the resolution.
From Solving prostitution [Editorial]- The Washington Post:
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL adopted a resolution last week urging the worldwide decriminalization of prostitution, and D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large) was among many to applaud the vote: He announced that he is considering introducing matching legislation this fall. Amnesty International and Mr. Grosso are well intentioned but wrong: The policy would do more to hurt victims of sex trafficking than it would to help them.
Amnesty International’s vote authorizes its international board to adopt an official policy asking countries to decriminalize what it refers to as “sex work” — the exchange of sex for money. The human rights organization makes its recommendation on the grounds that it would allow women to report abuse, gain access to health care and leave the business if they want without fear of legal consequences. Those are noble ends. Yet these means won’t achieve them.
Supporters of the resolution assume that sex work can be a profession like any other and that sex transactions can be consensual. This is probably true for some prostitutes. It is not true for the vast majority, who resort to selling their bodies because they feel they have no other option. Decriminalizing prostitution entirely might give some of these women a way out. More often, it would allow pimps to operate with impunity, using the money and status that comes with their newfound legitimacy to scale up trafficking operations that hurt the most vulnerable — the young, the very poor and especially the undocumented. The evidence seems to bear that out in Germany and the Netherlands, where trafficking has increased dramatically since the decriminalization of the sex industry in the early 2000s.
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