Legalization Of Prostitution Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Legalization Of Prostitution - Research Paper Example Nothing in the form of research on prostitution had been done before the nineteenth century, when a flurry of studies, the most famous of which by Dr. William Sanger, were published. Sanger was mainly concerned with who the average prostitute was and why she had chosen or was driven to the lifestyle. The profile showed a woman in her late teens or early twenties, usually illiterate, poor and/or from broken families (Bullough 243). Pre-dating Women’s Liberation, women of the day did not have very many options between being supported by a husband or family, or life on the streets. If one fell into poverty and had little or no education, prospects were bleak. Should a woman fall into social disgrace it seemed little difference if she took to prostitution or not; her reputation was destroyed anyway. â€Å"In his novel, Tess of the DUrbervilles, Hardy paints a different picture of a ruined maid where Tess, seduced and betrayed by an aristocratic libertine, is inevitably driven tow ards her ultimate destruction† (Bartley 1). Many families on the lower economic strata saw nothing wrong with forcing a daughter into prostitution, and many domestics, immigrants, with no money or seduced and abandoned by their rich lovers, saw no other option. (Bullough 243). On the question of should prostitution be legal, and despite Sanger’s rather dire findings, he remained a pro-legalization advocate. â€Å"...if history proves that prostitution can not be suppressed, it also demonstrates that it can be regulated, and directed into channels where its most injurious results can be encountered, and its dangerous tendencies either entirely arrested or materially weakened† (Sanger quoted on ProCon.org, para 2). To legalize or not to legalize continues to be a question that perplexes society. And those who would abolish it, as well as those