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Indybay Feature

Today: Conference on Decriminalization of Prostituion, in Berkeley

by P.R. website
Decriminalization of Prostitution:
Paid Sexual Exploitation for Poor Women?
One-day conference August 30, 2004
(Berkeley, CA, USA)
Decriminalization of Prostitution:
Paid Sexual Exploitation for Poor Women?
One-day conference August 30, 2004
(Berkeley, CA, USA)

This conference will provide a context for understanding prostitution. While most people intuitively understand the harm of prostitution, they are confused about what to do about it. Would decriminalization decrease its harm, or would it actually be a pimp and john magnet, mainstreaming a practice that is a human rights violation, and creating a class of mostly poor girls and women who would be available for purchase, like a pack of cigarettes?

This conference is especially for Berkeley voters. It is open to advocates, public health personnel, attorneys, students, social workers, criminal justice personnel, substance abuse counselors, and the public.
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by Pro-Choice all the way
This is one of those fake "grassroots" organizations run by right-wing moralists (similar to the "abortion counseling" hotlines that counsel women not to get abortions). They tone down the rhetoric a little in this post and try to present it as a "conference" that will present both sides, but a quick glance at the agenda shows that their true aim is to defeat a measure giving women control of their own bodies.

Keep your laws off my body!
Considering almost all prostitutes are under the "protection" of pimps and in 2003 the Department of Justice (those radical feminists?) found the average age of entry into prostitution is 13-years-old, I think one would be hard-pressed to show how prostitution is about the "choice" for 13 year olds to be pimped out.

The Council for Prostitution Alternatives is where I got the 90% factoid from, but if any of you have a reliable study showing dramatically different results I'd like to see it. I consider 'dramatically diffferent' to be some evidence that less than the majority of prostitutes are under the control of pimps.

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