One of my links provided data. But I suspect you'll just say, "we need different data."
Your only link provided data about prostitution in its illegal state, yes. Where are the statistics on how or whether legalization changes that data.
(So yes, we need more data, because what you provided isn't what I was talking about.)
However to show you that I read your link, here's the part after the data that talks about what to do about it:
Women in prostitution are targeted as the problem instead of making the sex industry problematic and challenging the mass male consumption of women and children in commercial sex.
Agreed here, this is a problem.
This is institutionalized when governments and NGOs argue for the medicalization of prostitution when they propose laws on prostitution which subject women to periodic medical check-ups. It is stated that women in the sex industry would be better protected if they submitted, or were required to submit, to health and especially STD screening. The way in which sex industries are responsible for the widespread health problems of women and children is mystified with proposals to implement health checks of women in the industry. No proposals have been forthcoming, from those who would propose both mandatory and voluntary medical surveillance for women in the sex industry, to medically monitor the men who would purchase sex.
Which is true, unfortunately it's probably not possible to monitor the customers. It is also typically outside of the scope of government outside of age limits. Instead, requirements of condom usage are the best protection.
On the other hand, proposals to medicalize female genital mutilation have been soundly rejected by womens groups. Womens human rights organizations have refuted arguments that girls and women undergoing genital cutting would be better protected from its health risks and physical trauma if it was performed in hospitals under trained medical supervision. Although policies and programs that medicalize female genital mutilation may reduce some injury and infection, womens groups have stressed that these policies and programs do not address or end the abuse of womens human rights represented by the very institutionalization of this unnecessary and mutilating surgery in a medical context.
This feels like a nonsequitor. FGM is unncessary mutilation performed by adults to minors. If an adult woman wanted her clitoris removed and her labia stitched up, besides pondering her mental health she's quite capable of making that decision for herself. Comparing it to prostitution doesn't make sense here.
The same is true with current attempts to medicalize prostitution. No action will stabilize the sex industry more than legitimating prostitution through the health care system. If medical personnel are called upon to monitor women in prostitution, as part of "occupational health safety," we will have no hope of eradicating the industry.
I'd argue there's no hope of eradicating it ever, quite frankly. Not going to eradicate any form of human behavior, only regulate it or punish it.
Furthermore, from a health perspective alone, it is inconceivable that medicalization of women in the industry will reduce infection and injury without concomitant medicalization of the male buyers.
A claim, but not backed up by anything.
Thus medicalization, which is rightly viewed as a consumer protection act for men rather than as a real protection for women, ultimately protects neither women nor men.
A conclusion that's not terribly supported.
As with other forms of violence against women, eradicating the health burden of prostitution entails addressing but going beyond its health effects. To address the health consequences of prostitution, the international human rights community must understand that prostitution harms women and that in addition to needing health services, women must be provided with the economic, social and psychological means to leave prostitution.
I agree that women who wish to leave prostitution should get help and women who are unwilling participants should OBVIOUSLY be given help rather than punished.
Until prostitution is accepted as violence against women and a violation of womens human rights, the health consequences of prostitution cannot be addressed adequately. Conversely, until the health burden of prostitution is made visible, the violence of prostitution will remain hidden.
I agree that it can be violence against women but that it is not necessarily so.
