New York awards $1 million toward ‘sex worker health’
Hudson Crozier
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You might not have ever paid for a prostitute, but if you’re a New York resident, you are currently paying to support prostitution, whether you like it or not. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) has allocated $1 million for a “sex worker health pilot program” to provide medical care to prostitutes for the next two years. She did not wait for the state legislature’s permission to do it, much less taxpayers’.
“The Health Department remains committed to providing affirming, compassionate support and quality services to all residents without stigma and discrimination. Access to comprehensive sexual health services improves the quality of life for everyone,” a spokesperson told the New York Post. “Individuals participating in this program often experience discrimination, violence, and threats to their emotional well-being. They are more vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections, yet lack access to quality routine screening.”
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While claiming it is helping “everyone,” the state is not merely subsidizing care for anyone faced with health problems as serious as those of prostitutes. It specifically invites prostitutes so that it may subsidize their lifestyle, granting a sort of special status like that of a military member.
“What are they going to have, a prostitution card?” a Republican state legislator joked.
The movement to decriminalize “sex work” has made headway in some parts of New York and is often characterized by libertarian arguments. Supporters ask why anyone should care what women do with their bodies. But as with many aspects of the sexual revolution, the Left is never content with a neutral outlook. The “freedom” many liberals envision requires supporting the behavior with everything we have to make it easier and easier to choose. These efforts never seem to stay at the “leave people alone” stage.
Now, under a misguided sense of compassion, New York will celebrate people for selling to strangers what only a loving, committed partner deserves. Providing any resources to steer them away from this choice amounts to “stigma.” We must instead provide treatment specifically tailored to accommodate it and send them on their way, the state believes. Ironically, it claims to care about their “emotional well-being” while doing this. It also treats the high risk of disease associated with sexual promiscuity as a valid task for which their bodies simply need maintenance.
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Leaders should not tell their people they will help them degrade themselves. They should tell them that a better life is possible. We cannot pretend that policies such as Hochul’s do not have a cultural effect when the movement to destigmatize prostitution is cultural in nature.
Hudson Crozier is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.