You mean like every other shitty job? If economic circumstances are the core problem, then address those rather than taking away people's agency.
I agree, worker protections for sex work is a great idea.
Is there though? Or is it really the circumstances around the sex work that cause these problems, like legislation that forces women to work with pimps for protection, who then get them hooked on hard drugs and physically abuse them.
Let alone what happens in case of pregnancy.
No line of work has exactly the same impact as every other line of work. Even within a line of work there are huge differences, ie. programming in Silicon Valley is very different than programming in a smaller city.
Furthermore, individual responses to stimuli are fairly unique. Some people don't respond well to hard physical labour and others relish it. The people who don't respond well just don't do hard labour.
Similarly, some people can have casual sex without issues and some people cannot. Sometimes the people who can't have casual sex can have sex in a therapeutic context, because the deeper meaning the concept of "therapy" holds makes it not casual in their mind. How we view things has an outsized effect on how they impact us.
Finally, I don't see how pregnancy is any riskier than work that can maim you for life.
Prostitution pregnancy is dangerous for the outside person. Having both loving and caring parents is quite important during the early years… It also gets important late in life to know family medical history.
Of course, there are many other ways society ends up with unloved kids that don’t know at least on of the parents. But those ways are generally shunned, and for a good reason.
Abortion is another alternative but that is not exactly risk-free either. Both for physical and mental health.
And yes, there are other dangerous jobs. But then we as a society take steps to reduce the danger to the minimum and pay accordingly to those who do take the risk. But in this case whole „profession“ does not bring any upsides to the society. Aside from very few people.
When I was 17, I was conscripted into the military in a shitty country. There, I was forced to kill and prepare chickens. I couldn't eat chicken for a year afterwards.
If my economic circumstances had forced me to take that as a paid job, my mental health would have gone to shit. Furthermore, if I had had to choose between doing that and prostituting myself, guess what hormonal me would have chosen?
Thankfully, I could go to college instead. I think education and choices in ways of making a living are the important bit.
Of course, there must be few people who have mental issues and a) won’t get normal hormone response to sex b) already addicted to sex. But I see it same as vast majority of homeless people. When a choice is made because of mental issues… Its not really a choice.
Similar to people putting in major overtime to run away from issues at home or inner daemons. Not as bad as alcohol or drug addicts and sometimes society even puts them on a pedestal as great achievers. But overall it’s a net loss to society. Because it normalizes and promotes behavior that is disadvantageous for majority of society. And underlining issues will bite back eventually. Both the person in question and society through his or her medical bills at old age.
The entire market is pushed into the unregulated black market as a side-effect of making buying illegal. This world is dominated by criminals and gangs.
Point in case - USSR where not working was a crime :)