THE BIOETHICAL ARGUMENT FOR THE DECRIMINALIZATION OF SEX WORK
| Autor: | Garcés, Christina |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2023 |
| Předmět: | |
| Druh dokumentu: | Text |
| DOI: | 10.34944/dspace/8571 |
| Popis: | This thesis uses the four principles of biomedical ethics as put forth by Beauchamp and Childress to address the issue of the criminalization of sex work in contemporary national and international settings. Though a controversial subject, the existence of sex work has been a constant for centuries worldwide. However, the criminalization of sex work in contemporary society has been largely predicated on the conflation of sex work and a number of social ills, particularly human trafficking and sexual exploitation. This uncritical and inappropriate conflation of terms has enabled discourse, legislation, and even health care policy that is unethical, ineffective, and explicitly harmful to both sex workers and victims of human trafficking alike.Medical professionals have a unique set of moral obligations to which they must hold themselves in their practice of medicine, both with their individual patients as well as with the society in which they live. This thesis argues that the criminalization of sex work is fundamentally incompatible with contemporary health care ethics, reviewing each of the four fundamental pillars of biomedical ethics as it applies to policies that criminalize sex work. Each chapter will outline the many ways in which criminalization violates each of these fundamental principles, causing immense and largely preventable harm in the form of human rights violations and poor public health outcomes. At the same time, this thesis will introduce the alternative policy of decriminalization, discussing its features and implications for public health, and highlighting the ways in which the decriminalization of sex work results in improved health, safety, and human rights outcomes for both sex workers and victims of sex trafficking, exemplifying a viable, ethical, and evidenced-based alternative to criminalization. Given the gross bioethical and humans rights violations associated with the criminalization of sex work, this thesis concludes that there exists evidence of a substantial ethical imperative on the part of the medical community and its constituent professional societies to formally condemn policies that criminalize any and all aspects of sex work and issue formal recommendations for its urgent decriminalization, as both a public health issue and an issue of human and patients’ rights. Urban Bioethics M.A. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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