[quote=Arraya]It is a phenomenon, much like slavery, that has proliferated with the spread of capitalist markets, and with gender, sexual, and racial oppression.[/quote]
That’s complete nonsense. Both prostitution and slavery predate capitalism; they even predate feudalism!
Another nonsense is to put slavery and prostitution together. Slavery entails victims; that’s why no one would defend its practice today. Prostitution, OTOH, may be regarded as “wrong” and immoral by some (myself included), but like doing drugs, it has no victims. Therefore, it should not be a crime.
Again, it’s naive to think that we can legislate morality. I agree with you that prostitution has the potential to destruct the person’s self and humanity. But making the practice illegal does not accomplish its intended objective, instead, we end up with underground criminal activity.