A bill that would have decriminalized prostitution among consenting adults in Colorado will not move forward this year after its sponsor said it lacks the votes to pass its first committee.

Sen. Nick Hinrichsen, a Pueblo Democrat, said he will ask to postpone Senate Bill 97 until after the legislative session ends rather than advance it to a contentious hearing where supporters — including sex workers — feared harassment and public exposure.

SB 97 would have changed the term “prostitution” to “commercial sex activity.” It also would have eliminated four petty offenses, including solicitation, patronizing a prostitute, and the petty offense of prostitution itself.

Under the bill, buildings subject to civil forfeiture for housing prostitution businesses would no longer be seized. SB 97 also would have removed the prohibition of massage therapists and peace officers from receiving a license or certification with a prostitution conviction on their record.

Hinrichsen told Colorado Politics the bill didn’t have the votes to get out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where SB 97 was scheduled for a Wednesday hearing.

“There is a community impacted by the current policy” that includes sex workers, who would have been at the Capitol in force Wednesday to testify, Hinrichsen explained.

But he said some of those witnesses did not feel safe coming to the Capitol. They worried that identifying themselves would have opened them up to surveillance and doxxing. There have already been nasty comments made, which Hinrichsen called witch-hunting.

To ask them to come here and open themselves up to increased exposure, and without the votes to get the bill out of committee, wasn’t worth the risk, he indicated.

Hinrichsen said he had some frustrations with how the bill was portrayed, starting with calling it an effort to legalize prostitution.

Under legalization, the state would come up with regulations on commercial sex activity, which SB 97 doesn’t do. A law setting up an escort bureau, which SB 97 would have amended, has been in place since 1980.

The bill, however, would have decriminalized prostitution, removing criminal penalties for soliciting, but leaving in place laws banning pimping, a felony, and pandering when it is tied to criminal intimidation or menacing.

Opponents of the proposed legislation deliberately misrepresented the two concepts as one and the same, Hinrichsen said.

“I want Coloradans to hear from people impacted, from the sex workers,” Hinrichsen said, adding that studies have shown that places that have decriminalized prostitution, without increasing prostitution, result in safer outcomes.

That includes less trafficking, fewer sexually transmitted diseases, and fewer assaults on sex workers, he said.

The lack of a criminal record for prostitution will make it easier for a sex worker to get a job in another area, Hinrichsen said, adding, “I think that is something that should be a goal, whatever your moral views on sexuality…those are goals we should support.”

That was a conversation, he said, that didn’t go far enough because it was drowned out by misinformation and a “moral panic” response.

Hinrichsen believes this is not the end of the conversation, but he won’t be part of it in the future, as he is not running for re-election this year.