OPINION:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who’s been gaining in polls for the Democratic ticket to the White House, has just announced her latest political pandering — er, policy view — and it’s one goes like this: Maybe prostitution should be legalized.
So long as it doesn’t aid and abet all the human sex traffickers, that is, she quickly added.
And all the curious minds of the country go: How exactly does that work? After all, it’s not as if the two — prostitution and trafficking — aren’t tied at the hip. Inseparable, experts might even say.
“Prostitution isn’t people deferring entrance to Yale while they prostitute to raise money for tuition,” said Nicole Bell, a former prostitute who entered the field after being trafficked as a teen, reported Fortune in April. “That’s not the reality of what it looks like.”
But here’s the shame in Warren’s open-door invite to legalized sex work: Even Warren knows this. Prostitution isn’t exactly the stuff of Disney movie magic.
In 2018, before taking to the presidential trail, Warren voted for a Senate bill that clamped down on online sites that connected sex workers with their clients. And in 2017, she co-sponsored, with Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, no less, the End Banking for Human Traffickers Act, a piece of legislation aimed at cutting off suspected sex traders from their money.
So what’s her deal nowadays?
Apparently, Warren believes she needs the Bunny Ranch vote to compete.
When asked by a Washington Post reporter if she would decriminalize the world of prostitution, Warren said this, as Mediaite noted: “I’m open to decriminalization. Sex workers, like all workers, deserve autonomy but they are particularly vulnerable to physical and financial abuse and hardship. We need to make sure that we don’t undermine legal protections for the most vulnerable, including the millions of individuals who are victims of human trafficking each year.”
Perhaps her plan is to put government in charge of the trade. Think of the tax dollars, right?
Sen. Kamala Harris, another Democrat seeking the high Oval Office in 2020, supports legalizing prostitution, too.
“When you are talking about consenting adults,” Harris said in February, “I think that you know, yes, we should really consider that we can’t criminalize consensual behavior as long as no one is being harmed. But at the point that anyone is being harmed or exploited, I think that we have to understand that is a different matter.”
Oh, you mean like with abortions?
Then again, the pro-abortion, pro-prostitution policy makes perfect sense. In Democratic land, that is. After all, a pregnant prostitute doesn’t exactly scream, “Hire me.”
Democrats, the defenders of women’s rights — opening the wonderful, glorious, glamorous, world of selling one’s body for sex to women across America. Make way for the Disney magic, girls.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter @ckchumley.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.