If we put on our western cultural (you know, the ones that say Jesus made the world) eye-glasses we will 'see' prostitution as something bad.
The 'christian' influenced view is that prostitution is a criminal racket run by gangsters, and the women (and sometimes men) have either been bullied by their pimps, or drugged until they become addicts and forced to work in brothels.**
Some of that is likely true (at times), but is it always 'truth'?
You've got it completely backwards.
The truth is that prostitution was almost always and everywhere legal until women got the right to vote in the 20th century.
Even in the church-dominated middle ages it was tolerated because the alternatives to making it illegal were considered worse.