The killings of five British women last month demonstrate laws criminalizing prostitution only put women who work in the sex trade in danger, a Halifax doctor argues in a recent edition of the British Medical Association Journal.

The murders in the city of Ipswich were a predictable result of revamped legislation targeting prostitution introduced in the United Kingdom earlier in the year, said Dr. Michael Goodyear, an oncologist with a longstanding interest in women’s health and medical ethics.

Killings like those in Ipswich and Vancouver, where farmer Robert Pickton is now on trial for the murders of six sex trade workers and charged with the killings of 20 others, are just the most spectacular examples of the dangers faced by prostitutes everywhere.

"It goes on all the time," he said in an interview Monday. "If they’re not murdered, they get beaten up and it disappears. It never gets investigated."

In an editorial published in the Jan. 13 edition of the British Medical Journal, Dr. Goodyear notes that sex trade workers have the highest mortality rate of any group of women and experience a murder rate 18 times that of the general population.

"The U.K. government failed these women by ignoring their voices and those of researchers, service providers and organizations . . . and by promoting discriminatory laws and practices," he writes. "Only by moving prostitution out of the criminal justice system and focusing on public health and social care can we provide optimum support and help to break the cycle of violence."

The British reforms included measures like "anti-social behaviour orders," which can be used to force sex trade workers from the areas they normally work.

Dr. Goodyear said an anti-prostitution campaign in Ipswich earlier in 2006 drove sex trade workers from residential neighbourhoods to poorly-lit industrial areas beyond the eyes of closed-circuit cameras and other protections.

"You’re essentially identifying these people as second-class citizens and saying that if you kill them or beat them up, nobody will care, that they are unlikely to go to the police," he said.

Dawn, a Halifax woman who worked in the sex trade in Toronto about 15 years ago, says she was fortunate to be involved in an escort service, rather than street prostitution.

"Even though I was raped once and badly beaten up, I had a driver I could call and come get me," she said.

But the criminal stigma against sex trade work, which she pursued as a way to pay for university and raise her son, meant the violence she experienced was never investigated.

Rene Ross, executive director of Stepping Stone, a non-profit Halifax group seeking to support the health and safety of men and women working in the sex trade, advocated decriminalizing sex work, while testifying before a parliamentary subcommittee investigating the laws.

"We are seeing here in Halifax . . . that they are threatening the health and the safety of those involved in the sex trade," she said Monday.

While prostitution itself is not illegal in Canada, just about everything around it is. After three years of hearings, the committee released a report last month that held little promise of change. Ms. Ross said legal crackdowns have had the effect of dispersing the sex trade; where there used to be two main "strolls" in the city, there are now several.

Besides forcing women to work in neighbourhoods where they may be in danger, criminalization also means women sometimes can’t take the time to check out the people who pick them up, she said.

It also makes it harder for organizations like Stepping Stone to contact women with "bad date lists," or hand out free condoms and other supports.

Contrary to popular opinion, research shows sex trade workers tend to be much more diligent about safe sex practices and less likely to carry sexually transmitted diseases than the general population, Dr. Goodyear said.

But when fear of prosecution drives prostitutes away from the support services they rely on to maintain their health, that falls apart.

"You’ll make what you fear most come true," he said.