Activists welcome Supreme Court recognition of sex work

By Jose Kavi

New Delhi, May 26, 2922: Christians working for women’s empowerment in India have welcomed a Supreme Court order recognizing sex work as a profession.

At the same time a Catholic moral theologian says crime is different from sin and something decriminalized does not stop being a sin.

A three-judge bench led by Justice L Nageswara Rao recognized sex work as a “profession” and said their practitioners are entitled to dignity and equal protection under law. It ordered that police should neither interfere nor take criminal action against adult and consenting sex workers.

“Sex workers are entitled to equal protection of the law. Criminal law must apply equally in all cases, on the basis of ‘age’ and ‘consent.’ When it is clear that the sex worker is an adult and is participating with consent, the police must refrain from interfering or taking any criminal action,” the bench ordered after invoking special powers under Article 142 of the Constitution.

The bench also ordered that sex workers should not be “arrested or penalized or harassed or victimized” whenever there is a raid on any brothel, “since voluntary sex work is not illegal and only running the brothel is unlawful.”

The court also held that a child of a sex worker should not be separated from the mother merely on the ground that she is in the sex trade. “Basic protection of human decency and dignity extends to sex workers and their children,” the court noted.

Writer-activist John Dayal says the court decision, “seen without moralizing or religious glasses, restores dignity to millions of women who live out their lives in the country’s “red light“ areas which they did not enter voluntarily and which they are not free to leave.”

Holy Cross Sister Prema Chowallur, who campaigns against human trafficking in northeastern India, “strongly” supports the apex court decision that favors the voiceless and the marginalized.

“Some of the sex workers are by choice while others by force. Nevertheless, all of them are victims of sexual abuse, and assault and are deprived of basic human rights and dignity of life,” observes the Guwahati-based nun, who asks, “If not the Supreme Court, who will fight for their rights, dignity and bring inclusion?”

Sister Chowallur points out that the apex court decision has come eight months after the Bombay High Court’s September 26, 2020, order to release three sex workers stating. The high court had held that prostitution was not a criminal offence. “Let us embrace these sisters of ours in love and not with dejection or rejection,” she pleads.

Sister Sujata Jena, a lawyer-activist, ‘wholeheartedly” welcomed the court’s progressive order in favor of sex workers. “The sex workers have a right to live with dignity under Article 21 of the Constitution of India since they are also human beings and their problems need to be addressed,” asserted the Bhubaneswar-based member of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Congregation.

She expressed the hope the order would move towards minimum wages, statutory benefits, and retirals. “Sex workers are human. Every human being has the right to make informed decisions about his or her own body, and laws that govern sex work are laws that govern an individual’s right to make decisions about her own body,” Sister Jena added.

Jesuit moral theologian Father Stanislaus Alla urges people to neither celebrate nor condemn the court order.

“The first thing to note is that crime is different from sin. Put it simply, state declares something as a crime and religion declares something as a sin. For instance, adultery (also, homosexuality) which was held as a crime for long in many societies (under the influence of religious and cultural values) is decriminalized in many nations. It does not make it less sinful,” asserts the priest who teaches in Delhi’s Vidyajyoti College of Theology.

Religion, he adds, continues to declare something as sinful and retains its moral right to declare it in that sphere, while exhorting the faithful to avoid it. “Decriminalizing what one considers as sinful should not be seen as an act that automatically goes against a religious value. Religious leaders and guides will have to challenge and invite the faithful to live morally upright lives,” he adds.

Virginia Saldanha, former executive secretary of the Women’s Desk of Bombay Archdiocese, says legalizing prostitution could protect the women in the profession from exploitation by police, but at the same time it could also boost trafficking.

“Unless the government law enforcement bodies do their jobs properly, to ensure that trafficking is stopped, legalizing prostitution would hardly make a difference,” warns Saldanha. She wants the government to takes adequate steps for the empowerment of girls and women to help them out of the trap of poverty. Women are pushed into prostitution as a last resort to put food on the table, she adds.

Legalizing prostitution “would blur the lines between those pushed into prostitution unwillingly and those who choose it as a profession,” she warns.

Saldanha says police normally drag their feet to respond to cases of violence when reported by women. “Will they act on complaints of prostitutes? This is a big question.”