While prostitution itself is legal several provisions around the business are not. Bedford v. Canada challenges the laws around prostitution that compromise the safety of women working in the sex trade.
The federal government responded to the Supreme Court ruling six months later with Bill C Bill C sets out to firmly define the laws that challenge a sex workers ability to conduct her work with greater visibility and safety.
In other words- advertising, communication and safety mechanisms such as indoor venues, security or screening would be illegal. Current laws on prostitution in Canada, introduced in , make it illegal to purchase sexual services but legal to sell them. However, long before this rigorous judicial debate, the moral dilemma of the sex trade existed and always will. On one side is the argument that women are free to choose to sell their bodies for sex; and on the other side is the argument that women are entrenched in the business of selling sex and are victims of abuse in need of rescue.
Both sides argue for the safety of women and both sides are correct in doing so. At some point all women who have offered their flesh as a commodity stand on one side of the choice debate.
Some, and perhaps the most vocal, declare ownership over their body and a right to use it as they desire. The nation has become sidetracked by a moral argument. But where is the passionate debate about poverty, unemployment, hunger and inadequacies in the social security net? This story is about a young woman who believes that it was the absence of choice in her life that obligated her into Sault Ste. It is not every sex trade workers story.
