Mother Jones: Does Your State Criminalize HIV?

The Center for HIV Law and Policy's updated mapping of HIV criminalization laws shows the far-reaching harms of government ignorance about HIV — and news outlets are paying attention. Beirne Roose-Snyder, CHLP's Managing Attorney, tells Mother Jones: "the common name for the statutes—criminal transmission laws—is inaccurate since none requires that transmission of HIV actually occur. Instead, the laws usually punish failure to disclose HIV-positive status to a sexual partner as intent to do bodily harm." In fact, unlike most criminal laws, HIV-specific laws dispense with the need to prove that a person with HIV even intended any harm. The result: many hundreds of people across the U.S. arrested or serving time on the basis of their health status, for conduct that would be legal if they had avoided getting an HIV test.

Read Mother Jones' full piece on HIV criminalization in the U.S. here.