Canada is more than just Tim Horton’s and currency that strangely resembles Monopoly money. Canadian lawmakers have recently deemed several of their laws pertaining to prostitution “unconstitutional.” One law prohibiting brothels, one restricting public communication with clients, and one allowing people to live off the avails of prostitution will soon be rewritten to deem them “constitutional” within the next year.

What has been confusing for quite a long time is why countries, like Canada and the United States, find it necessary to meddle in affairs that don’t apply to their duties. Regulating the government is one thing, but regulating what humans choose to do with their bodies is absurd.

Prostitution, illegal in the United States, may possibly be another source of revenue for those who choose to participate, legally, in Canada. America forbids prostitution because apparently a woman’s decision as to how to use her body is considered “immoral” and “unethical.”

Bible-thumpers will be the first to say that anything deemed remotely inappropriate can be your one-way ticket to Hell. However, the “Average Joe” on a daily basis commits more sins than he realizes. Envying your neighbor’s new Camaro? Telling your Mom you’re at the library when you’re really at a friend’s house? Knocking back a few too many Budweiser’s every weekend?

This rationale of pointing fingers is similar to discussing the topic of homosexuals and their right to wed. People love to dwell on topics that have no direct influence on their lives. If someone’s a happily married heterosexual being, how does two people of the same sex getting married personally affect them? If somebody is a happily married heterosexual being, how does some woman miles away trading oral sex for a couple of bucks personally affect them? It doesn’t. A woman’s personal choices, immoral or not, are her decision, not the decision of a lawmaker miles away.

A common argument for the ban of prostitution is one that often labels prostitution as a form of “human-trafficking.” Americans, being the knowledgeable and worldly folks that they are, have a hard time differentiating between prostitution and human trafficking. There is a difference between the hooker standing on 7th Avenue in Ybor City on a Saturday night, and the women who are kidnapped and forced into the sex slave industry.

Prostitution, by definition, is the purchasing and selling of services provided by a woman. Human trafficking, by definition, is the purchasing and selling of the woman herself. Human trafficking is forcing women, often girls in their early teens, to perform sexual favors against their own will. “Will” is the operative word. Prostitutes willingly market themselves and use their bodies to make money. It is their decision, and their right as a woman to utilize their bodies as they please.

Women have the right to terminate their pregnancies in the United States, but when it comes to simply having intercourse, it all of a sudden becomes “immoral” and “unethical”.

While Canada makes strides in their decisions regarding the economy and women’s rights, the United States will continue to point fingers at those considered “immoral”.