Public health workers advocate for the decriminalization of sex work in the interest of public health.
Date: 1870s
Throughout this period, sex work is mostly decriminalized across the country. Suffragettes seek to criminalize sex work, naming it as "demeaning" to women. Their strategy is to scare landlords from renting to sex workers and to campaign for the police to enforce laws against sex work. They join forces with evangelist preachers and other religious groups to stigmatize sex work as a "social evil." The coalition works to ban sex work, just as they will work to ban alcohol during Prohibition.