ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Czech lands, then within the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had a regulationist regime. The regulationist approach had many opponents, including the first Czechoslovak President, T. G. Masaryk, who opposed prostitution on humanistic grounds. Not long after the founding of the new Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, the country adopted an "old abolitionist" approach to prostitution. The lifting of criminal sanctions on prostitution, the opening of borders, and the vast economic inequalities between Eastern post-communist and Western capitalist countries, led to a dramatic rise of prostitution in the Czech Republic. The total number of women in prostitution in the Czech Republic is estimated as being between 10,000 and 13,000. As mentioned in Section 2, many municipalities in the Czech Republic have passed ordinances which severely limit or ban street prostitution in public areas.
