Before we decide whether to legalize prostitution, let’s get to the facts, not the myths, about legal prostitution. The Real Harms:

In prostitution, men remove women’s humanity. Buying a woman in prostitution gives men the power to turn women into a living, breathing masturbation fantasy. Research shows that a majority of johns refuse to use condoms, or pay high prices to desperately poor women to not use condoms, or rape women without condoms.

Another man said, “I use them like I might use any other amenity, a restaurant, or a public convenience.” As shocking as these men’s observations may sound to those who think prostitution is like the movie Pretty Woman, their descriptions closely match women’s descriptions of prostitution. The women explain how it feels to be treated like a rented organ. “It is internally damaging. You become in your own mind what these people do and say with you. You wonder how could you let yourself do this and why do these people want to do this to you.”

Women who prostitute have described it as “paid rape” and “voluntary sexual harassment, often worse.” His payment does not erase what we know about sexual violence, domestic violence, and rape. This understanding of the realities of prostitution by the john and the woman he buys is at odds with the notion of prostitution as slightly unpleasant labor that should be legalized. Whether or not it is legal, prostitution is extremely harmful for women. Women in prostitution have the highest rates of rape and homicide of any group of women ever studied. They are regularly physically assaulted and verbally abused, whether they prostitute on the street or in massage parlors, brothels, or hotels. Sexual violence and physical assault are the norm for women in legal prostitution.

Arguments for legalizing prostitution depend on the strength of two arguments: that prostitution is a choice for those in it and that the harms of prostitution are decreased if it is legalized. There is little evidence that either of these arguments is true. But zombie theories about prostitution never seem to die no matter how many facts we beat them down with.

Only a tiny percentage of all women in prostitution are there because they choose it. For most, prostitution is not a freely made choice because the conditions that would permit genuine choice are not present: physical safety, equal power with buyers, and real alternatives. The few who do choose prostitution are privileged by class or race or education. They usually have options for escape. Most women in prostitution do not have viable alternatives. They are coerced into prostitution by sex inequality, race/ethnic inequality, and economic inequality.

Here are examples of these invisible coercions: The woman in India who worked in an office where she concluded that she might as well prostitute and be paid more for the sexual harassment and abuse that was expected of her anyway in order to keep her job. That’s not a choice. The teen in California who said that in her neighborhood boys grew up to be pimps and drug dealers and girls grew up to be hos. She was the third generation of prostituted women in her family. Prostitution more severely harms indigenous and ethnically marginalized women because of their lack of alternatives. That’s not a choice. The young woman sold by her parents at 16 into a Nevada legal brothel. Ten years later, she took six psychiatric drugs that tranquilized her so she could make it through the day selling sex. That’s not a choice.

There is no evidence for the theory that legalization somehow how is never specified decreases the harm of prostitution. In fact, legalization increases trafficking, increases prostitution of children, and increases sex buyers’ demands for cheaper or “unrestricted” sex acts. Whether prostitution is legal or illegal, research shows that the poorer she is, and the longer she’s been in prostitution, the more likely she is to experience violence. The emotional consequences of prostitution are the same whether prostitution is legal or illegal, and whether it happens in a brothel, a strip club, a massage parlor, or on the street.

In a decade, street prostitution in Sweden has decreased by 50 percent, although it has increased in neighboring countries. There is no evidence that women have moved from street to indoor prostitution in Sweden. The intimate relationship between prostitution and trafficking is highlighted when buyers are criminalized. Sweden now has the fewest trafficked women in the EU. The law interferes with the international business of pimping and the practice of buying sex. While there was initial resistance to the Swedish law, now more than 70 percent of the public supports it. Women exiting prostitution use state-provided exit services. Not surprisingly, “those who have extricated themselves from prostitution take a positive view of criminalization, while those who are still exploited in prostitution are critical of the ban.”

Prostitution should not be legalized because it can’t be fixed; only abolished. In order to escape, women need housing, education, jobs that provide a sustainable income, health care, and emotional support. We should all be working on providing women with alternatives to prostitution.