The passage by a vote of 64 to 12 in the National Assembly climaxed but probably has not ended a debate that cuts across ideological grounds dividing feminists, conservatives and left wingers about not only the best way to end or reduce prostitution but over whether it should be reduced at all. The debate is just heating up in the United Kingdom where a parliamentary committee is considering a report recommending a “Sex Buyer Law” like France’s, and been attacked for their troubles as misguided do-gooders influenced by the Christian “rescue industry.”
However, the push behind France’s new law comes not from the country’s religious conservatives but from mainstream socialists. They are following the Nordic model after the Swedish and Norwegian policy of treating prostitutes as victims, who are often illegal immigrants working in slave-like conditions for the men who trafficked them into Europe from Africa and Asia. France will fine those who buy sexual services 1,500 Euros for the first offence and 3,500 Euros for the second.
On the other side of the transaction, the law lets the majority of France’s 30,000-40,000 prostitutes who are illegal immigrants to stay in the country as long as they leave prostitution. Funds and programs to rehabilitate them are also provided.
Nonetheless, a few prostitutes protested, bare-bellied, in front of the National Assembly, complaining that any restriction on their trade, even one aimed exclusively at johns, will force them into more dangerous conditions serving less respectable clients.
“We will simply face more poverty, more violence and more stigmatisation,” said Morgane Merteuil, spokeswoman for STRASS, one of France’s unions for prostitutes.
Amnesty France continued Amnesty International’s worldwide opposition to any prostitution restrictions. Its chief Catherine Godard told reporters, “All the studies we have conducted in the last two years show that the more you target any player in the prostitution business, the more the prostitutes’ position becomes precarious.”
The debate is heating up in the UK, where a parliamentary committee ponders the issue. In a report in The Independent, a Leeds University researcher named Laura Connelly claims the existence “of a rapidly-growing ‘rescue industry’: one that makes its living from identifying and creating victims of sexual slavery. It is in its interest to find them. Lots of them.”
Connelly accuses anti-prostitution advocates of imprisoning prostitutes to keep them from pursuing their freely-chosen profession.
“Such is the extent of the harm caused by anti-prostitution zealots,” she writes, “that we must question whether their actions are fundamentally any less harmful than those they are seeking to ‘save’ women from.”
On the other side of the debate was Heather Brunskell-Evans, a researcher at the University of Leicester. She summarized a report commissioned by Parliament as, simply, “Prostitution is harmful. Specifically, it can be understood as a form of violence against women and girls.” Moreover, “Evidence suggests that most women find sex work more traumatising than empowering: indeed, 68% of women in prostitution experience post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”
The British Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee has been examining this report and the laws affecting prostitution since January.
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