I've noticed a lot definition creep when it comes to talking about sex work. It seems like "trafficking" is becoming almost the default term when people mean prostitution. Like you, I've opened up newspaper stories with a headline that includes "human trafficking" only to read what sounds like reporting on a vanilla vice bust involving a few sex workers from the local area. Were those workers really "trafficked"?

I don't know. Maybe legally, given how more and more laws make it easier to define simple sex work as human trafficking. But when I think of human trafficking, I'm not thinking about sex workers choosing of their own free will to be sex workers.

I don't think most people believe that's what human trafficking means, but pressure from people on both the left and the right has been greatly broadening the definition.

Christian conservatives don't believe any woman can consent to sex work because sex work is gravely immoral (sinful) in all circumstances. Those sex workers just need to get Jesus so they'll stop wanting to sin, and maybe a stretch behind bars will help them find Jesus.

Many on the left believe sex work is fundamentally and inescapably exploitative. They don't believe any woman can genuinely consent to doing sex work. They believe someone has to be taking advantage of those women.

So, lots of people are just fine calling ordinary sex work human trafficking, which doesn't help serious public discourse at all.