4 21 02 Raped Women

Is there Hope for Raped Women?

HB1756 is a bill in Missouri to punish those who infect others knowingly with HIV/AIDS. The CDC Preventions News update 4/11/01 quotes the Associated Press (4/10/02) that the bill, not passed, attempts to punish those with HIV/AIDS who expose others to the disease with 5-15 years in mail, and life if the person gets infected. The article explains further measures in the bill:

1) Allows the courts to test suspected sex offenders for HIV and giving the results to alleged victims.

2) Allowing prosecutors easier access to HIV test results in sex offenses

3) Allowing the state to tell victims the results of the tests

Rabbi David Eidensohn, director of the National Non-Sectarian Council of Pro-Family Activists, notes that the law, as it now stands, without this bill, allows a rapist to refuse to be tested for HIV/AIDS, and thus, demand that the woman drop charges to test. This barbaric rule is not the law in some radical place like San Francisco, but in Missouri. Bill HB1756 is coming, decades after the onset of the HIV epidemic, to rectify this problem, and the bill is not yet passed. "This," says Rabbi Eidensohn, "shows the incredibly slow pace that we go in order to adjust to the terrors of HIV Confidentiality Laws, that made HIV not a disease, but a civil rights program for homosexuals. Because of the attitude that HIV is not a disease but a civil rights problem, we are going to have a terrible and prohibitively expensive epidemic. The suffering of the innocent is ignored, and the "rights" of homosexuals are paramount."

Rabbi Eidensohn pointed out the financial costs in states, like California, that empower the gay lobby instead of the public. The CDC Update 4/11/02 quotes the Fresno Bee about Sacramento, California and Fresno Country's expenses with HIV. The cost of drugs are between $1,200-$5,000 a month. Fresno Country as 2,600 people with HIV and AIDS. Some say that the real figure is 6,000, but since the government does not insist on reporting of HIV or AIDS, nobody knows how many people are sick.

"Look at this financial disaster," said Rabbi Eidensohn. "In one county, we have HIV/AIDS costs, for the medicine alone, ranging from $3,120,000 at a minimum to an astounding $30,000,000! And this is just for a month. For just one year, this single country is faced with HIV drug expenses that could be from 37 million dollars to 360 million dollars. Nobody even knows, there are no plans, there is no way to get this kind of money, and soon, the bodies will either pile up, or they will crowd our hospital system and make it collapse, or we will borrow money that we cannot hope to repay."

Rabbi Eidensohn notes that when the state wants to stop a disease, it can do it. He quotes the CDC Update 4,11,02 and the Chattanooga Times/Free Press 4/7/02, that "Despite record low numbers of cases of tuberculosis in Tennessee, local health officials are organizing a program to screen those considered at high risk for the disease." Rabbi Eidensohn notes, "Here is an aggressive program, targeting the foreign born, international travelers, the homeless and the incarcerated, making them test, even though they seem perfectly healthy. Why is nobody screaming about civil rights? When the Gay Lobby leaves us alone, we can stop diseases. Had this been done with HIV and AIDS, the disease would not exist in America or even elsewhere."

Rabbi Eidensohn asked where NOW was when raped women could not find out if they were infected with HIV unless they dropped charges. "What kind of country do we have" asked the rabbi, "when raped women are not protected, and those who deliberately infect other people are?