The parallels with the UK are striking. We too have been undergoing a massive programme of cuts for over a decade, with the burden falling disproportionately on the shoulders of women. Significant numbers of women have turned to sex work due to benefits sanctions and public sector wage freezes, and the precarious nature of sex work has increasingly come to characterise many of our contemporary experiences of work.

Lawmakers in Mexico City’s congress on Friday voted 38-0, with eight abstentions, in favor of a bill to remove a line in the civic culture law which said prostitutes and their clients can be fined or arrested if neighbors complained.

The idea of ‘sex work’ makes people even more uncomfortable. When I discuss this with people, and other nurses, they’ve often already made up their minds based on their moral or societal views. But clinical professionals have to leave their moral judgement at the door when they treat patients and look at the evidence.

By organizing in solidarity with one another, sex workers could live safer, more stable, and more dignified lives. They could fight back against the harms of clients and extractive managers, and fight to win resources that confer real agency over their lives by broadening their range of choices beyond “sell sex or die.” But decriminalization of sex work is a precondition for any of that, and must be centralized as a fundamental socialist demand.