The crash happened around 6:30 a.m. when the driver of a 2009 Honda Civic tried to outrun deputies from the Zavala County Sheriff’s Office and attempted to pass a semi truck, the state Department of Public Safety said. The Civic collided with a 2015 Chevrolet Equinox, which caught fire.
Everyone in both vehicles was killed, according to DPS. That includes the 21-year-old driver of the Civic, who as from Houston, and his five passengers. Some of the passengers were from Honduras, department spokesman Christopher Olivarez said in a statement. The two people in the Equinox were from Georgia.
Legalizing prostitution hasn’t lowered sex trafficking in any of the parts of the world where prostitution is legal. And I think it should be legal, but that’s not the argument that gets you there.
Human trafficking is about controlling people, taking the desperate and controlling them for fun and profit. Yes, victims may avoid law enforcement for fear of prosecution, but that has more to do with attitudes towards women than it does with attitudes towards sex work. Compare the rights of a prostitute in New York, where it is illegal, with a prostitute in Bangladesh, where it is legal. It’s not just the law, but the cultural attitudes towards human rights and equality that affect human trafficking.
But the expansion of the market just creates more demand, and more visible demand, which outpaces the reduction due to competition from legal prostitutes. In other words, just because it’s legal doesn’t mean women want to be prostitutes, and the demand for sex workers far exceeds the supply. Legalization allows pimps to go corporate, and pay taxes, while still exploiting vulnerable people with economic coercion and violence.