What should the legal status of prostitution be?

Government oversight of prostitution would improve all outcomes

Question: What should the legal status of prostitution be?
Position‹3 of 4›: Prostitution should be legalised
Argument: Government oversight of prostitution would improve all outcomes

The legalisation of prostitution ensures Governments can regulate prostitution to reduce social ills.

The argument

This approach is taken in order to preserve the rights of sex workers, providing services like unionisation and police protection, while trying to decrease certain negative effects prostitution such as crime or the spread of sexually transmitted infections. This means that sex workers will not be punished as long as they stay within the designated legal parameters as dictated by the government and that the government can, therefore, regulate and oversee prostitution, keeping sex workers safer.

Context

The practice of legalisation can encompass all manner of laws to regulate prostitution, such as permitted locations and advertising laws. This means that each government can individually decide the parameters within which they will allow prostitution.

Premises

[P1]Legalising prostitution lets the government regulate and oversee it rather than driving it underground. [P2] Oversight can preserve sex workers' rights through services like unionisation and police protection. [P3] It can also reduce negative effects such as crime and the spread of sexually transmitted infections by setting legal parameters sex workers stay within. [C] Therefore, prostitution should be legalised because government oversight would improve all outcomes.

Counter-arguments

By overseeing its legalisation, the state is sanctioning prostitution and profiting off of it. This prioritises the consumer over the prostitute’s health and safety. A It is also not a given that the state will be able to dictate policies that will protect sex workers, listen to sex workers when producing policies, or indeed have sex worker’s best interests at heart. Sex workers may have to continue working under criminal conditions if they are unable to meet state requirements.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The state does not necessarily know how best to protect sex workers.