Have you considered that generally speaking, porn is a lot SAFER that street prostitution?
As a hooker, you're having sex with multiple strange men, untested. You're liable to robbed, beaten, raped or even murdered. Or having your earnings snatched by some pimp. And then you're getting busted by the cops and thrown in the clink on a regular basis. You're risking a pretty serious criminal record that will definitely stay with you for life.
Whatever you may think of it morally, porn as a profession is legal. It is largely regulated, its participants are frequently tested for sexually transmitted infections. There is a level of comfort and expectation of safety between its participants.
Now you might say "Well, she doesn't have to be a streetwalker, she can be a high-class escort." Yeah, we're talking about the 90s and early 2000s here, before we had all these sites and social media apps that make that shit accessible to virtually anybody who wants to do that. Back then, you had to go through an agency--which was an extremely selective process, if you were even lucky enough to have the connections to get an interview in the first place.