Fight to decriminalize prostitution begins next month
Posted May 29, 2013 7:04 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – A coalition of women’s groups, including a Vancouver shelter, is headed to the Supreme Court next month in a bid to strike down the country’s prostitution laws.
They want sections of the legislation that criminalize sex trade workers removed.
Janine Benedet, a lawyer with the Women’s Coalition, says they want the laws that prevent men from buying, selling, and profiting from women in prostitution to stay on the books.
“Men don’t have a constitutional right to buy women in prostitution, their security is not put at risk, it’s women security that’s at issue, and it’s only prostitutes themselves that should be decriminalized,” she says. “We don’t assist women, we don’t make them safer, we don’t make them more equal, by decriminalizing the johns who buy them and the pimps who profit. The criminal laws need to remain for those individuals.”
The Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter is among the groups granted intervenor status.
The hearings begin June 13th.
