Catching up with Part 1 of what was a very intense Wednesday afternoon, with two hours of the Safety First Coalition lobby followed by two hours of the abortion lobby, with a short gap in between in which I discovered that after-hours it is almost impossible to get anything to eat or drink in the House, unless your friendly (or not) local member feeds you. I say almost – because if all else fails there’s the expensive and not very good “special” House of Commons gift-shop chocolate….

So to serious matters. The lobby had two excellent and important speakers, Catherine Healy from New Zealand and Pye Jakobsson from Sweden.

Jakobsson said that Swedish sex workers were not consulted about the introduction of the laws making up what has become known as “the Swedish model”, basically consisting of criminalising the clients of prostitutes, rather than the workers. She said that an EU delegation visiting last summer said that freely working prostitutes should have say in the law, but the responsible minister in parliament had suggested that this very controversial, against what everything that Sweden stands for.

Jakobseen added with a wry laugh: “If speak out loudly saw if I am not a victim that just shows how victimised I am.” Later she added: “Before had a whore stigma, now have a victim stigma.”

The UN had been asked to evaluate to impact of the law, but again the minister said that was not going to happen.

She said the impact had been worst on the most marginalised group, street workers, who had less time to evaluate. They now got into car, then negotiated.

“It has not had much effect on me as an educated woman working indoors.” But for more vulnerable indoor workers, they were finding it harder to evaluate clients. Previously a client who was jumpy and agitated was a danger sign. “Now all clients are nervous and jumpy.”

Before there had been little or no pimping in Sweden, she said, but now, as it was harder to find clients, and internet pages were regularly taken down, workers were being forced to resort to working for pimps who provided working space at great cost, and internet sites that had similar huge charges but security measures about the authorities. Additionally, if a man and women were found with condoms, these could be part of “proof” of the man’s offence.

There had also been an unexpected impact on male prostitution and transgendered workers. Even though the law was gender neutral, the whole package of measures around it was based on the assumption that sale of sex is a crime against women, so there is no effort to protect vulnerable males. A survey of 19-year-olds found that more males than females had sold sex.

There are also likely to be public health effects – the main organisation working to combat HIV infections had taken out “sex workers” as risk group for fear of falling foul of law

Did the law actually help fight trafficking? Since there was no before and after data it was difficult to tell. Proponents of the law say it keeps women off the streets, but most traffickers want to keep women inside because they want to control them. Traffickers were sometimes caught when clients calling the police; that was not something that happened now.

The client’s “crime” was only treated as minor, with the same punishment as petty theft. A male judge in southern Sweden got to keep his job after a conviction, but a woman in the police academy who was outed by the tabloids as working as an “escort” lost her job.

Catherine Healy said that in New Zealand a few years ago a consensus arose that sex workers needed a better relationship with law, a view held even by those opposed to all prostitution. The talk was about protecting human rights, and occupational health and safety.

The decision was for the total removal of the laws against brothelkeeping, living on earnings, and soliciting. She pointed to the last of these as particularly important, since a soliciting conviction was a major impediment to other employment

Prior to the law change even discussing sex work was legally problematic, even the discussion of basic safety measures. So she said, orders would be placed such as “can you give us some of those gumboots”.

She said that brothelkeepers complained the law change had “taken away mystique”, and fewer women were coming forward to work than when they’d been able to talk to workers about being “escorts”. This meant of course that it was entirely clear to workers what they were getting into.

Opponents of legalisations talked often about the vulnerability of sex workers, “but their solution is to make them more vulnerable”. With legalisation they can be part of the same protective frame that sits around any other worker, any other contractor. The sex workers get contracts in writing. And the act says explicitly that anyone can decline any act at any time at any reason. Health ministry rules were displayed on the wall – sex workers can use as a tool in negotiating with clients.

Workers were now electing to take more control on their own terms – working from home, city apartments, or on street. Before the law might have forced them into certain places. Under the old law if a worker was convicted in massage parlour for soliciting, she would have to go streets.

But there were still problems in the law, one being around the position of migrant workers. “We do have significant migrant sex worker population, as we’ve always had, but they don’t have same rights as local sex workers. They can’t emigrate to do it.” That obviously could put workers in a vulnerable position.

Unlike the claims of the law’s critics, it didn’t decriminalise violence, didn’t send out a message that all women were available, didn’t send out a message to youth that sex work is honourable occupation. “Although I think it is honourable occupation.”

Enshrined in the law was monitoring over five years. A significant amount of that research will be out this year. “The findings looking very positive in the protection and welfare of sex workers.”

“In the main the debate has settled down, although because election year the law is likely to come up.”

In response to a question, Healy said that the numbers of sex workers had probably stayed the same, but figures would show more “brothels” – but that was because one woman working out of a flat was classed as a “brothel”. Previously women had been herded together in “massage parlours” and similar, but many more were now choosing to work independently.

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A speaker from the Royal College of Nurses whose name I didn’t catch pointed out that two years ago its conference voted (with 87pc support) to lobby for decrimininalistion. “Once you step outside religion and politics and look at health there is no justification for criminalisation. I hope we are grown up enough in 2008 to have grown up sensible debate about consenting sex. The current laws inhibit access to healthcare and make these women – our mothers, our daughters, our sisters – feel like second-class citizens, and sometimes even healthcare workers treat them like second-class citizens.”

Stroppyblog has an excellent report from this week’s meeting, so I won’t bother to repeat that. Just a few extra notes:

Rare enough, but I found myself applauding the Conservative John Bercow (a joint secretary of the cross-party pro-choice parliamentary group), who said that since the antiabortionists were “determined to shoehorn” their own amendments into the Human Embryology Bill, they had opened the way for liberalising amendments.

Evan Harris, Lib Dem, said that an analysis by the House of Commons library showed that there was a 2-1 pro-choice majority in the Commons, “this is a strongly pro-choice house”.

A speaker from the Fawcett Society said on the 80th and 90th anniversary of the women’s suffrage acts, this was definitely NOT the year to turn back the clock on abortion rights.

The TUC women’s conference for two years in a row has had as a theme “a woman’s right to choose”.

Wendy Savage spoke about later abortions – there are practical and emotional differences, but no moral difference. She spoke about performing a 26 week abortion on an 11-year-old Bengali girl made pregnant by an imam – when she saw the patient before the operation she was colouring-in dolls clothes.

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And coming up, a counter-protest to Anne Widdicombe’s antiabortion efforts, on February 6. One for the diary.

The Times ties itself in knots trying to report the words of Margot Wallström. The comment is feminist, but it is also anti-Europe, so The Times hates it and loves it all at

the same time. What she said about the selection procedure for top EU jobs:
“Where does this debate really take place? I am still puzzled. It is extremely strange. All I know is that it is always men, and very rarely do you hear about female candidates. Men choose men. That is the disadvantage of this situation.”

The Guardian’s “bad science” column discovers – perhaps unsurprisingly, that a Telegraph “survey” on doctor’s view of abortions in GP surgeries wasn’t worth the weight of paper on which it was written (which was zero, since it was in a doctor’s chatroom). What does worry me is that it appears at least some of the doctors responding were unaware of the existence of medical (as opposed to surgical) abortions.

And The Daily Mail is predictably sarky, but girls are taking up football (soccer) in large numbers, dumping netball and hockey. As I’ve written before in another venue, allowing girls to compete in the same sports as boys (not a “ladyified” choice such as netball), with the boys, on a true level playing field, is an important advance.

I read:

Florida’s “Choose Life” license plates, of which more than 40,000 have been sold, have raised more than $4 million for low-income single moms. But there’s a catch: only women who choose adoption qualify. A woman who wants to keep her baby can just go starve in hell. Since only a handful of women want to give away their babies — even among pregnant women who plan on adoption, 35 percent change their mind once the baby is born — the money is just sitting there.

Babyfarms anyone?

Just landing in my inbox is the following:

www.safewomen.info is the website side of a recently started women’s community aimed at women’s safety. The website is just one side, Safe Women also has a secure server kept at a separate location, that is not accessible via the internet, for you to send picture messages or texts to so that there are details held of where you are or who you are with.
For example, you take a cab home after working late or on a night out. You take a picture of the registration number of the cab and send it to the Safe Women number. Once in the cab you let the driver know that you are a member of Safe Women and that you have sent the details of the cab to a secure server.

It is easy to say good idea – taking control. Sure if this encourages women to go out when they want to when they otherwise might not through fear, then it could be a good thing.

But is this dealing with the worst risks that women actually face – which is being in a vehicle on the road in the first place, rather than that of assault by a male? Wouldn’t a tyre tread gauge to help judge if the vehicle is roadworthy be more useful?

AND, is it not further promulgating the idea that public space is a dangerous place for women where they have to take precautions – quite elaborate precautions – to look after themselves?

The risk of assault from a stranger is exceedingly low – and higher for men than for women – so why is this not directed at men?