We haven't exactly messed with it too much over the millennia. It's acceptableness to society and the way prostitutes are treated by society has remained roughly constant after you adjust for the baseline trend of increasing personal freedom and decreasing violence.
Prostitution has been regarded in VASTLY different manners depending on the time period and/or place you were in. Life was much different for a Greek Heteara than it was for a woman working in an Aztec Cihuacalli. (But both lives were pretty good truth be told. One was elite and rich, the other would be considered a soccer mom by today's standards. Not rich, but definitely upper middle.) And then life is different still for the average american streetwalker or escort. (Some can be rich, but majority are very poor. And they are all scorned by society. At least the holier than thou types in society.) In today's America, or even in ancient and contemporary China, prostitutes have nowhere near the status of the Hetaera, or even the women working in the Cihuacalli's. Life for contemporary American prostitutes is probably pretty hard at the mean.
So societal acceptance and society's treatment of prostitutes very much depended, not surprisingly, on which society or culture you were talking about.
It does not seem to be the same as now.
Would you say the same about prostitution?