The job, she said, is the most stable work she has had and helped put her son through college. But she is doing more than stewing about it. Instead, Ms. Prostitution in the United States is legal only in a few counties in Nevada, which has about 20 legal brothels. At an initial hearing on Thursday, more than people β many of them current and former sex workers β gave radically different opinions about whether decriminalization would cause prostitutes greater harm.
Some prostitutes who have been sex trafficked find themselves on the other side from sex workers who have not been. Prostitutes would most likely work openly out of homes in neighborhoods across the city. Certain blocks could become de facto red-light districts. And policing strategy would have to change so officers could distinguish pimps from sex traffickers. Spellman, a transgender woman and activist, has worked for more than two years with Councilman David Grosso and advocacy groups in the city to try to marshal support for the legislation.
Violence against sex workers had made it critical for lawmakers to do something radical to try to protect them, Mr. But Sarah Smith, 21, who said she had been trafficked as an year-old, said normalizing prostitution would make it far more difficult for the police to find people being exploited.
Supporters say the bill β versions of which have recently made little headway in New York State , San Francisco , New Hampshire, Massachusetts and elsewhere β is the only effective way to combat sex trafficking. They say that only when every aspect of prostitution among consenting adults is made legal will prostitutes feel secure enough to report criminal activity, including coercion and abuse by pimps or sex buyers, without fear of arrest.
(mh\u003d3_gQxThm3uEYuPQ1)12.jpg "Babes in Latina")
Spellman, 52, a longtime advocate for sex workers, said about existing prohibitions on prostitution. I understand the need to protect people, and there are people being exploited, but not in the numbers that people think. Critics counter that the initiative is promoting a narrative that is dangerously false. That, they say, would force ever younger girls into prostitution and make it difficult for law enforcement to detect sex trafficking cases because citizens might call less frequently if prostitution is legal.
