Illinois is a lovely state full of nice people—with a very weird government. Access to abortion is a sacrament. State pensions are underfunded. Illegal immigrants are welcomed. Parental rights are routinely undercut. Businesses are regulated into extinction. Public schools are a hot mess. Residents are fleeing.

However, it seems that becoming the first state in America to fully legalize prostitution, which we are instructed to call “sex work” to avoid giving offense, has become a legislative priority in the Land of Lincoln.

It is not like women who are selling their bodies for cash are currently being persecuted. Back in 2013 Illinois reduced the crime of prostitution to a misdemeanor. However, doing away with all criminal penalties is apparently the only way, according to legislators planning to introduce this bill, that Illinois’ “sex workers” will feel safe while exchanging bodily fluids with strangers who apparently have no moral compunctions about buying a human body in much the same way they might buy a well-worn pair of cheap shoes at the local Goodwill store.

Handing out a state tax identification number or creating a new department of well-paid bureaucrats overseeing a woman’s activities when she climbs into a truck cab or arranges a hookup on her cell phone is not going to enhance the dignity of those who fool themselves into believing they are empowering themselves by selling their flesh. 

Although Hollywood has long peddled the myth that prostitution is harmless fun between two normal consenting adults, decades of social science research have repeatedly found that prostitution is inextricably linked with childhood sexual abuse, and women who go down this path are typically reliving—in the worst possible way—an experienced trauma that has saddled them with desperately low self-esteem. These issues also show up in other associated self-harming behavior such as endemic drug and alcohol abuse, which only serve to further trap prostitutes in a cycle of hopelessness and misery.

Prostitution is not a “victimless” crime; the women who participate in it are, in fact, the real victims, despite what those with ridiculous “Pretty Woman” movie fantasies might prefer to believe.

If our state legislators truly cared about these women, they would mandate funds for mental health treatment and substance abuse programs instead of putting their official stamp of approval on a lifestyle that will inexorably grind these women’s damaged and despairing psyches into dust. The already meager legal sanctions associated with prostitution in Illinois might be the very last chance these troubled and traumatized women will have to change the direction of their horrible lives.

It is also, quite frankly, bizarre that the Democrat leaders of our state, who loudly proclaim their support and respect for women at every conceivable opportunity, cannot fathom the effect fully legalizing prostitution will have on the women of our state—particularly vulnerable and often insecure adolescent girls. 

The body shaming and misogyny that are too often present in the middle school and high school years, a critical developmental period that often defines a positive or negative self-image for girls that can easily linger far into adulthood, will certainly be turbocharged by state efforts to turn prostitution into a legitimate career option. One can only imagine the crude insinuations that will be hurled at an attractive, yet understandably immature girl, by thoughtless boys and mean girls; perhaps an even worse fate would greet an awkward or overweight girl, who would be derided by her peers as “too ugly to sell”. Illinois legislators who support fully legalizing prostitution do not, to be blunt, have the good sense that God gave a goose if they fail to understand these consequences are unavoidable should they go down this road.

The only people (if one is charitable enough to grant them personhood) who will benefit from decriminalizing prostitution are the pimps and predators who will no longer need to fear any repercussions for luring troubled young women into a soul destroying and dangerous occupation. I would, in fact, encourage a return to felony status for prostitutes—and harsher penalties for their customers—in order to better protect the most vulnerable adolescents and young women from the sneaky and salacious grooming that will inevitably escalate if legal sanctions further evaporate.

The legs of Illinois’ women should not be open for business. Their protection must be a legal and moral imperative for our state government, and no foolish academic argument about the need to be less “judgmental” should sway our elected leaders from their duty.