I present to you, some pretty good data: the time Rhode Island "accidentally" legalized prostitution for a number of years, and then made it illegal again, and the correlations to public health that seemed to result from this:

https://whyy.org/articles/prostitution-decriminalized-rhode-...

Scroll down to the section "Researchers take notice" if you are low on time.

They used surrounding states as a control. They tried hard to account for the consequences, but that pesky 40% drop in gonorrhea and 30% drop in rapes (!) just wouldn't go away (and also doesn't fit the feminist narrative that rape is "only about power")

There's also no convincing evidence (just cherrypicked data that is either pro- or con-) that legalizing prostitution results in more sex trafficking.

> Sex workers may individually choose to tolerate that or may not

Funny thing about you saying that, they can't choose anything if it's illegal- if it's legal, they can not only choose, they can bring legal charges against anyone who mistreats them.