Today is National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day
Today, on National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, we want to remind people about the links between HIV transmission and intimate partner violence. Studies have shown that women who are subjected to abuse, especially sexual abuse by intimate partners, are at greater risk of HIV infection. There are several ways in which coercion and violence make it more likely that a woman will contract HIV. Violence robs a woman of her ability to refuse sex with an infected partner or to insist on using condoms. Forced sex creates physical wounds that increase the opportunities for HIV to pass from one person to the other. And there is evidence that girls who suffer sexual abuse are more prone to risk-taking behaviors when they are older. But violence does not just pave the way for AIDS; the formula also works the other way around. Revealing her HIV status or even that she was tested may entail severe consequences for an abused woman.
The problems intensify if the woman is both HIV+ and pregnant. Women who are subjected to ongoing violence by an intimate partner tend to be isolated and can have a hard time getting medical help. According to Margo Kaplan of the Center for HIV Law and Policy, complicating factors include the fear that HIV treatment drugs will harm fetal development. A woman might fear that authorities will take away her child or children when they learn she is HIV+ and in a violent relationship. She might worry that the medical professionals who provide prenatal care will reveal her HIV+ status to a violent partner or hostile community. All of these factors are barriers that prevent a woman from getting the help she desperately needs.
One new resource is the publication of a guide by The Center for HIV Law and Policy, called “HIV and Pregnancy: Medical and Legal Considerations for Women and Their Advocates.†It can be downloaded here.
For the next four years, I stayed with my ex for the sake of the baby, suffering the most horrific kinds of abuse, physical and emotional. His “reason” for abusing me? Because I “trapped” him through pregnancy. "
March 10th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
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