Yes. Absolutely. Even setting aside the ways in which legitimized prostitution can still be ripe for individual abuses, the message it sends also needs to be taken into account. Prostitution (and pornography) condition society to see women as commodities. That's unacceptable.

I expect this comment to go gray with lightning speed.

Prostitution will always be around - there's no benefit to leaving sex workers to live in the shadows. If you legalize the industry - and not just the workers - you can have at least some amount of control over the health, safety, and quality of workers, employers and clients. By legalizing the industry you also help to normalize sex, which is IMO on way too high of a pedestal in most societies. Sex workers are perceived the way they are largely because of how "sacred" sex is - if you take that power away from sex, then you remove this stigma of sex workers being objectified or somehow less than others because of how they make their living.