Luis Alba

Bassam Alkabash

Prostitution shouldn’t be legalized

1. Prostitution gives females and males many diseases and parasites such as HIV/AIDS, STD’s, Herpes, crabs, and many more. This is important because if people don’t use protection, they can be in risk of having a disease. Health officials state,

25% of them have HIV or AIDS. 3-5% of the sexually transmitted disease in this country is related to prostitution (compared with 30-35% among teenagers).

2. Prostitution puts females and males into risk of being killed, kidnapped, robbed, and rapped. This is very important because you might not know if a person will do something wrong.

Eighty-two percent of these respondents reported having been physically assaulted since entering prostitution. Of those who had been physically assaulted, 55% of prostitutes have been assaulted by customers. Eighty-eight percent had been physically threatened while in prostitution, and 83% had been physically threatened with a weapon. Sixty-eight percent reported having been raped since entering prostitution. Forty-eight percent had been raped more than five times. Forty-six percent of those who reported rapes stated that they had been raped by customers.

In the 1990s, researchers Melissa Farley and Howard Barkan conducted a study on prostitution, violence against women and post traumatic stress disorder, interviewing 130 San Francisco prostitutes. Their findings indicate assault and rape are all too commonplace.

3. Most prostitutes are under the age of 18. This is important because people under the age of 18 shouldn’t be working on these kinds of things. A study in 1993 from Health Centers states,  

2/3 of prostitutes began working in prostitution before the age of 16. Young women often enter prostitution as a way of escaping an abusive environment and because they are poor.75% worked for a pimp.
Also, a recent study from Africa states,
30 and 40 percent of prostitutes are between 11 and 18.