Regulated does not mean people weren’t pressured into it. Telling a young single mother from a poor country that most of her problems will vanish if she just works as a sex worker for a few years in Germany is legal and regulated. It’s not trafficking and not really coercion either. She will get a social security number, pay taxes, get health care, all that stuff she perhaps won’t get at home.

What do you think she will tell you if you ask her whether she is doing the job freely and if she wants to keep the job? Of course she will say yes.

But is it really just like any other job? The fact that sex workers in countries where it is regulated still suffer disproportionately from mental health problems, alcohol and drug abuse tells a different story.