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Understanding HIV criminalization
If you know you have HIV, you should tell your sex partners before doing the deed.
That’s just the right thing to do.
But HIV criminalization takes this to the extreme: More than half of U.S. states have laws that can put you prison for years if you know your HIV status and don’t tell it to a sex partner.
This is bad news for doctors and nurses, because HIV criminalization discourages people from getting tested. If you don’t know your HIV status, you can’t be prosecuted under mandatory-disclosure laws.
It’s not hard to put two and two together: “If I don’t know my status, they can’t put me in prison.” And that means people won’t get tested because they’re afraid of going to jail.
