The criminalization of prostitution

In current times, the body has become a medium for human expression. At a certain age, people can get pierced and tattoos that carry deeper meaning for them or are simply for aesthetic purposes. Cosmetic surgery is at its peak. For decades, people have been using their bodies to express their sexuality through stripping and pornography, yet the oldest profession in the world currently illegal in the United States. Adults are not allowed to have mutual, consensual sex with one another in exchange for a fee. Prostitution is legal only in the state of Nevada, where a thriving organized prostitution industry has developed. Elsewhere, prostitution still exists; proscribing has done nothing to cut back the business. Prostitution operates in the form of call services, massage parlors and street prostitution where the safety and health of the customers and the workers cannot be regulated. In order to correct this problem, it is necessary to establish that the right to prostitute one’s self exists under the right to sexual privacy. Once that is done, then the government can regulate the practice like any other business: protections for workers and customers, and safety and health inspections.

[...] The Court in this case found that the statute prohibiting prostitution to be unconstitutional because sexual conduct is a matter of private interest, not public. In re P. was decided shortly after Griswold and Roe, and the effects of the establishment of the right to privacy reverberate in the Court’s ruling. The Court maintained that an individual’s right to privacy indicates that a person’s choice to have sexual relations, when to have them, and how to have them is protected by the same penumbra of rights in the U.S. [...]

[...] Likewise, proscribing prostitution has no effect on the prevalence of its practice in the United States; although illegal, prostitution has remained in the United States. Much like the incarceration, and not rehabilitation, of drug users, social scientists have found that the incarceration or threat of has not shown to be a deterrent from prostitution. In re P N.Y.S.2d at 466. If prostitution is legalized, its practice can only become safer for all parties involved. It is a relatively common idea that prostitution is responsible for an increase in crime and sexually transmitted diseases. [...]