"There are organizations that may not on a daily basis think about sex workers that are now putting their lobbying machines into motion for it," said Baskin, co-director of the Sex Workers Project at the New York City-based Urban Justice Center.

What few realize, however, is that New York is not the only state where condom possession is used to target and arrest people suspected of engaging in prostitution. If passed, the New York bill would be a first-of-its-kind law, according to bill sponsors and sex worker advocates across the nation, perhaps paving the way for similar policies in other places.

"Prostitution is a scary issue for politicians to take up," said Stephany Ashley, programs director at St. James Infirmary, a San Francisco non-profit that helps about 6,000 former and current sex workers a year. "I think this would open up the doors for a lot of other cities and states to do the same."

A former sex worker herself, Ashley oversees all of St. James' services and frequently counsels the men and women who come through its doors. Over and over, she speaks with clients who say they limit the number of condoms they'll carry, for fear of arrest. Others hide condoms in sanitarily questionable places -- think used bleach bottles -- to conceal them from cops. "Nobody should ever have to make a choice to put themselves at that kind of risk," she said.

In 1994, in the midst of the AIDS crisis, San Francisco's legislative body passed a non-binding resolution that urged the police to stop confiscating condoms, and the district attorney to stop using them as evidence of prostitution. Both parties initially implemented the policy, but over time they have stopped honoring it, according to Naomi Akers, the executive director at St. James. "We need to have our own legislation," said Ashley. "We need to follow the lead of New York."

Robert Childs runs the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition, which assists groups that include sex workers, drug users, and undocumented immigrants. On weekly walking trips through East Durham's subsidized housing projects, Childs and his team spoke regularly with out-of-work moms engaged in sex work who were afraid that carrying multiple condoms would lead to arrest. So his team devised an alternate delivery route: They drop condoms in bushes so that individuals don't have to carry them all at once.

The irony does not escape him: "It's very strange, in order to promote something that would be beneficial to the greater society, we have to be sneaky," Childs said. "As a fiscal conservative, you should be really worried about that, because [limiting condom use] leads to HIV, Hep C, and then we spend a lot of money paying for these diseases."

To be clear: Condom possession in itself is not illegal in New York, nor in any other state. Rather, the fact that condoms can be used in court as evidence of prostitution means that police will sometimes confiscate condoms, interrogate those carrying several, and use them as part of the basis for arrest. A law like the one in New York would clarify that possession is permitted, quelling fears among those who want to use them. "If there is no way an item will ever be used as evidence, then there's no excuse to ever take it or put it in an arrest sheet," said Baskin.