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Advocates and researchers urge decriminalizing consensual adult sex work, citing health and safety gains
Summary
At a March 18 legislative hearing, advocates, academics and people with lived experience urged passage of Senate Bill 54 to decriminalize consensual adult sex work while preserving trafficking laws, citing public‑health studies, Rhode Island’s study commission and local organizing.
A legislative committee heard several hours of testimony March 18 from lawyers, researchers and people with lived experience urging lawmakers to pass Senate Bill 54, which supporters say would decriminalize consensual adult sex work while preserving laws that target trafficking and exploitation.
The hearing opened with Melissa Bridal, a lawyer and legal director of Decriminalized Sex Work, who framed the bill as a public‑health measure. "It would fully decriminalize consensual adult prostitution while retaining laws related to trafficking," Bridal told the committee, and cited a 2018 meta‑analysis from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health that she…
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