No Stupid Questions

Any consenting adult should be able to. Sex work is work and it's far past time we stop stigmatizing and criminalizing that.

This is America.

We don't care about wages, health care, or education. We care about what consenting adults do in the bedroom, even though that doesn't materially affect our lives in any way.

Because prostitution is illegal. When Roe was still a thing, a woman with control over her own body couldn't murder someone, rob a bank or drive drunk.

You're distorting the definition of "control" to create an irrelevant comparison.

That's like saying "If I smoke weed underground, am I higher or lower than the average person?" It's just nonsense.

You think you've asked a gotcha, but I'm just gonna accept your premise. People of all gender should be able to perform sex work in a safe, regulated way if they want.

Women have the right to have sex, so that's bodily autonomy. Prostitution involves money changing hands. Businesses can be regulated.

Because Roe v Wade did not establish a woman’s domain over her body, it established legal status of abortion on a federal level. Very specific.

That being said, sex work is about so much more than just a person’s body autonomy. There have been many societal concerns over the decades. I’m all for it, but the legal issues are complicated.

So many incorrect assumptions in this single question.

First off, Roe v. Wade didn't establish absolute autonomy over the body, only protected the right to legal abortion.

Secondly, how about men? One could argue that they've had all the bodily autonomy that they could hope for, but prostitution in the US is still illegal. Except that that's not entirely true - because Nevada.

The government has the authority to govern and establish laws. If they decree that prostitution is illegal, than it's not really a question of bodily autonomy as much as it is about business law.

You can't legally sell heroin on the street. You can't take someone else's car. And you can't sell your body for sex.

There is also a fundamental misunderstanding of Roe vs. Wade in this question.

Roe vs Wade did NOT establish a woman's bodily autonomy. Roe vs. Wade established that women had a right to an abortion because their existing right to PRIVACY allowed them to consult and make medical decisions without government intervention.

Yes, that is an exceedingly weak and cowardly ruling, and followers of the court warned people for DECADES that it was a weak ruling, and it made it precarious since the beginning.

But that's also your explanation for why it wouldn't cover prostitution. Commerce is not covered by the right to privacy.

The federal government didn't make prostitution illegal, so technically, a woman can be a prostitute in the US. Each state except for Nevada made it illegal, which is why anyone can't legally be a prostitute outside of the very specific places where it's allowed in Nevada.

Additionally, Roe v. Wade wasn't about bodily control. It was about a woman's right to privacy v. society's duty to protect life. The right to privacy argument was that government could not shove themselves in the affairs between a woman and medical staff. The duty to protect life argument was that society was ethically obligated to protect the life of vulnerable people. They found that life was more important than privacy, so it became a matter of when life began. The thing is that the beginning of a life isn't so clear.

According to science, life begins at conception. That's when the new DNA mix is created and a new being is created. Yet, that zygote cannot live on its own and is 100% dependent on the mother to exist, so is it really alive? That was the debate. The Supreme Court divided pregnancy into trimesters representing the incremental development of an individual human life.

Since a fetus was viable starting in the 3rd trimester, states could pass laws banning abortions then. Since a fetus had a heartbeat but was iffy on being viable in the 2nd trimester, states could regulate but not ban abortions in then. States couldn't do anything about abortion in the first trimester. That was what Roe v. Wade was about, and why many people were upset with the ruling. It never really addressed the fundamental issues of body autonomy from the government on one side. When it came to protecting life, it didn't really decide to do that either since they established periods in the life of the fetus during which it was legal to allow it to die. No one was happy with the decision because it was a negotiation that was hypocritical on both ends, which I guess is how you know it was a proper negotiation 😄

My personal opinion was that the judges were buying time to allow the legislative process to address the matter in a more democratic manner rather than allowing the court to decide. However, the topic was so politically costly that no one did anything to definitely address it, making the country depend on the ruling of 9 unelected officials.

I think sex work should be legalized. However, the law and "traditional values" have a lot to say (mostly outdated ideas) about sexual activities. It's the activities themselves, and the circumstances around those activities, which lawmakers have ruled illegal (or not) over the centuries.

Body autonomy doesn't really enter into it, because you can do countless legal and illegal things with your body.

Body autonomy is more relevant in the case of pregnancies, because the mother's life and health are directly at risk. Opinions vary on when life begins after fertilzation, but many would argue a cluster of cells is not a person yet, so the pregnant woman should be free to act in regards to her own body.

Why can't a woman take illegal drugs? Control of your own body is a philosophical concept not a legal one.

Because the Tribunal of Six does not care that their decisions are contradictory and hypocritical.

Because how we define bodily autonomy is really weird and comes with cultural baggage and other bullshit.

I personally believe that prostitution should be legal because it happens either way and it's better for everyone involved if it happens with government oversight and in a safe setting... but, I don't believe it's a paradox to say that women should have control of their bodies while also outlawing prostitution - we outlaw plenty of actions without viewing it as infringing onerously on our liberties.

In this specific case I think the main disconnect you're having is that when we talk about women's bodily autonomy it's essentially a euphemism for a very narrow part of reproductive freedoms that we're concerned with - most people who are concerned about Roe being repealed aren't super interested in, say, the right to strap yourself to a rocketship and achieve low earth orbit - even if that could be defined as some kind of autonomy involving your body.