Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Behind Bars for Being Pregnant and HIV-Positive
In May, 2009, U.S. District Judge John Woodcock sentenced Quinta Layin Tuleh, who was about five months pregnant, for the crime of having fake immigration documents. While both the federal prosecutor and defense attorney urged the judge to sentence Tuleh to 114 days, which would allow her to leave prison with time served, Judge Woodcock doubled the recommended sentence and exceeded federal sentencing guideline recommendations for the sole purpose of keeping Tuleh in prison until she gave birth. Judge Woodcock's sole justification for the extended sentence is that Tuleh is HIV-positive. The judge felt that - despite the fact that Tuleh had arranged for care outside the prison - keeping her in prison would best ensure that she would take anti-retroviral medication to reduce the chances of transmitting HIV to her child in utero. In issuing this decision, Judge Woodcock has created disturbing precedent that could allow the state to keep people in jail based solely on the fact that they have HIV or are pregnant.
To understand how misled Judge Woodcock's decision was, it is useful to understand a little about how HIV can be transmitted from mother to child, or "vertically." HIV can be transmitted during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding. While all babies born to women living with HIV will have HIV antibodies when they are born, 75% of those babies will "serorevert" and will not develop HIV infection. Thus, without any medical intervention, the rate of transmission is, on average, 25%. Taking antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy and birth or opting to have a cesarean section can reduce the rate of transmission to less than 2%. The best course of treatment to ensure the health of the mother and her child always depends on the individual woman's medical history and circumstances, and should be a decision she makes after consulting with her physician.
Judge Woodcock's decision ignores the complex factors involved in a pregnant woman's medical treatment decisions - as through being HIV positive makes one incapable of reasonable decision-making - and glibly equates being HIV-positive and pregnant with committing a crime. When reading the sentence, he makes clear that his sole reason for keeping Tuleh in prison was that she was HIV-positive and pregnant, and that, had she been pregnant and not HIV-positive, he would release her with time served. He reasons that he could keep Tuleh in jail "to protect the public from [her] further crimes."
Judge Woodcock bends himself into bizarre logical contortions to justify his decision. He states, "I don't think the transfer of HIV to an unborn child is technically a crime under the law, but it is as direct and as likely as an ongoing assault." Frustrated with what the law actually forbids, Judge Woodcock invents a new category of actions that, while not "technically" crimes "under the law," he still has the authority to punish with imprisonment. However, if judges could hold people in prison for any "direct" and "likely" action they found morally reprehensible, they would have unlimited discretion. This is precisely what the rule of law is intended to prevent.
While some states do, indeed, criminalize HIV exposure, Judge Woodcock does more than this - he imprisons a woman for the mere possibility that she might transmit HIV in the future. His reasoning essentially criminalizes being HIV-positive and allows the state to jail anyone with HIV simply because they have HIV and are capable of transmitting it to another. It classifies anyone with HIV as a threat to society who can be incarcerated at the whim of the state to protect public health. As Regan Hofmann eloquently explained in her May blog, criminalizing HIV transmission contributes to the stigmatization of HIV and actually harms prevention efforts. The imprisonment of those with HIV based on the mere fact that they might transmit it to others is even more abhorrent as a matter of law and policy.
Some might be tempted to think that the judge in fact is helping Tuleh by ensuring she at least has access to medications. This argument might have some merit if Tuleh were asking the judge to keep her in jail because she was concerned about deportation or her ability to access care. But the fact is-and Judge Woodcock recognized-Tuleh did not want to remain in prison, much less give birth in prison. Her attorney stressed that Tuleh had arranged for medical treatment outside of prison at a facility-unlike the prison system-specifically equipped to meet her medical needs.
Whatever Judge Woodcock's protective intentions, using imprisonment to coerce pregnant women to make the medical care choices we think best is an outrageous abuse of the system. By keeping her in prison because he felt it would be best for the fetus, Judge Woodcock was unable to see and treat Tuleh as a competent adult with the ability and the right to make her own medical decisions. Instead, he reduced her to a fetal container-an obstacle to providing the care he wanted for the child she was carrying. Not once in the transcript of the sentencing proceeding does Judge Woodcock consider Tuleh's own medical care or her health interests. She is guilty of being HIV positive, while her fetus is, in his view, "a wholly innocent person."
Judge Woodcock's decision perpetuates the myth that people with HIV are somehow "other"-more reprehensible, less responsible, and deserving of whatever state intervention helps protect the "innocent" remainder of society. It also furthers the view that pregnant women lose their autonomy and their rights by virtue of their pregnancy, and that pregnancy should enable the state to detain a woman if the state disagrees with the care she is choosing for her own body. While Tuleh may have had counterfeit immigration documents, having HIV and being pregnant does not make her any less "innocent" or any more deserving of punishment.
25 Comments so far
Show AllAren't immigration and tourism policies discriminatory against people with HIV too? I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that people with HIV are barred from entering the United States.
Er, excuse me -
she was arrested for having fake immigration documents;
she's pregnant and not married;
she has HIV;
probably also unemployed.
This person is NOT a "reasonable decision"-maker. This person really is "more reprehensible, less responsible", but for her own actions.
No, breaking the law and being irresponsible does "make her ...less 'innocent'". She should be confined because she broke the law, but in a medical place, with all humane and appropriate medical care, until the delivery and then returned to her country of origin asap.
The child is American then, and can stay, yes? How interesting. Maybe that's why she got pregnant and crashed the border - as good as a green card?
That said, the judge is grossly exceeding what the law was intended to allow, creating a dangerous precedent.
It is a grave human rights abuse that people can be imprisoned for not taking their medications, and it gets applied more to women than to men because men don't get pregnant, Arnie notwithstanding. Poor women are still subjects of institutional paternalism as property when pregnant.
HIV is already stigmatized - for everybody, even non-idiots and non-law-breakers. That's a different issue altogether.
Don't worry, be happy.
Thank you. The author obviously wants to confuse the HIV issue with the illegal immigration issue. As to the child 'staying', I've been told that under the current law, the mother and child can both be deported, and that the child MAY apply for citizenship when he/she reaches 18, but that anchor babies are no longer a given. Don't know for sure on this however. I guess the question should be asked, would this judge also put behind bars any other person who, in his mind, may not take proper medical treatment... epilectics, bi-polars, etc, or someone who for religious reasons outright refuses medical treatments?
Eee-yup. That's one hair that needs to be sliced a lot finer!
Do Christian Scientists or Jehova's Witnesses get jailed for not allowing their children to be medicated? what if the child dies? Is exorcism ok for illness?
There are problems - what about the Terry Schiavo mess a couple of years ago?
What about drug-abusing women who get pregnant - there have been cases where the druggie is arrested, jailed, and as soon as she's delivered, clapped in irons and jailed again, charged with endangering the health of the fetus. Very similar to the case in Kaplan's piece.
Some kind of twisted madonna/whore complex is at work in these cases. A case in Italy - a (married) woman ill with cancer and pregnant, Gianna something or other - she already had 4 or 5 kids - she had to choose between radiation to heal herself or bring the baby to term and surely die. She chose the baby. She died. She had been a doctor herself. She was made a saint of the Catholic church within the year. That's what's expected of women, that saintly self-sacrifice.
Judicial interference in patient care, when not requested by the patient, is pure politics.
The author Margo Kaplan has a much bigger problem than she can ever imagine if she working in the field of phantasy HIV.
The scientific evidence for the existence of HIV is zero. The is no test for it that is valid - the phantom virus has never been purified. What is alleged to be HIV tests are actually junk science allowed because they satisfy the primary requirement of the medical industry which is product promotion and marketing of services. HIV is pure junk science on steriods. All HIV positives are false positives.
To get a quick glimpse of the HIV industry disease mongering scam go to you tube and see the trailer for the documentary " House of numbers " - the book "Science sold out" - and " Fear of the Invisble" have very good descriptions on Amazon.com which will give a quick overview. On the internet visit www.aidsmythexposed.com and virusmyth.com
Simply put- the drugs are what are killing people in the west.In Africa it is the relabeling of old conditions such as maleria, TB and conditions stemming from malnutrition, and lack of public sanitation. The population of every Africa country that is alleged to have the highest infection rates to the magical ( and non existent hiv virus ) all have had enormous population growth over the last 25 years. The orginal American Aids (fast track gays and IV drug users ) were all badly immune suppressed from street and medical drugs, hemopillacs from a contaminated new medicine( costing $1000 a shot - its the money stupid ) After the first wave of drug destroyed immune cases the next wave followed, which is the illnesses and deaths caused by the medical drugs prescribed for victims of a false positive bogus HIV tests. The extremely toxic medical treatments for the false positive victims are what have been killing the victims since the testing industry exploded in the late 1980.
If Margo Kaplan is a human rights attorney dealing with people who are HIV positive she is in quite a mess. The question for Margo then is what is the human rights responsibilty of every citizen, and especially a human rights attorney, in a situation were human rights are violated and lives destroyed and people being killed by the conflation of junk science, deadly medical practices, corporate disease mongering and government policies.
...?
What a load of hooey!
And I'll bet, if you ever (gd forbid) got a diagnosis of HIV, phantom or not, you'd be the first in line for any treatments available. Misapplication of medical care in Africa has a different origin and can't be used to discredit medicine as it is applied in the West.
Time to retire those hoary old superstitions.
Maybe he's a rural Nigerian cleric.
This comment is a glorification of ignorance in which redballon illustrates how effective the brain washing of medical propadanda is in the manipulated mindless brains of media consumers.
To those whole are capbale of thinking for themselves, references were given which show how careful examination of every single facet of the "HIV product" has been examined in great detail and found to be all completely false.
To anyone that is capable of critical thinking all the information exposing this fraud is available in the references I gave. To those people who have become parrots of social programing information marketing campaigns disquised as science news, your absurd faith based beliefs in medicine can comfort you. They can even die in peace from the immune destroying effects of highly toxic poisons, falsely marketed as medicines, and console themselves that they are instead sick dying from a virus that has never been proven to exist.
You gave no references merely a diatribe.
For a schematic view of the HIV virus one reference is: http://www.hiv.lanl.gov/content/sequence/HIV/MAP/landmark.html
Speaking of glorification of ignorance and diatribes we now have in addition to the demonstration of public comments showing how the general public repeats what they have been told and thinks it true we have the worse glorifcation of ingorance from the so called Prof - thank you Prof for not noticing the references I gave in post number 3 and for you providing your own reference which is based on total conjecture based on assumptions without evidence based on further assumptions which multiply into the beweidering chain of wild make believe that masquerades as HIV science.
All is not lost however, many honest and competent scientists have carefully looked into all the evidence and concluded it is evidence of only fraud and disease mongering.
"If there is evidence that HIV causes Aids, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high degree of probability. The is no such document"
Kary Mullis, Bio Chemist, 1992 Noble Prize in Chemistry for PCR dna sequences
( PCR is one of the ways technology is misused to falsify the existence of the non existant HIV in test that pretents to count viral load. Kary Mullins refers to this as viral loads of shit ! )
" Up to today there is actually no single scientifically really convincing evidence for the existence of HIV. Not even once such a retrovirus has been isolated and purified by methods of classical virology"
Dr Heinda Sanger, Professor ( not all prof are parrots ) Emeritus of molecular Biology and virolog, Max Plank Institute.
For a quick intro youtube the documentary traler for HOUSE OF NUMBERS
Refer to my article on this thread which is #3 for other sources.
I will be out of town till Sunday night - hopefully others can speak up for evidence based science and against the the selling out of science
Sorry, shambie - you rely too much on internet quack sites. That's not thinking for yourself. You are forced to rely on your use of the passive voice and blind references because your argument is based on fantasy and not fact.
Biologists have SEEN this thing under a microscope, they have WATCHED it work and know HOW it works. The thing has its own enzymes, its own RNA, and it's been OBSERVED to reproduce! That's pretty real for a life form. that's realer than yeast or prions.
"HIV belongs to a class of viruses known as retroviruses. Retroviruses are viruses that contain RNA (ribonucleic acid) as their genetic material. After infecting a cell, HIV uses an enzyme called reverse transcriptase to convert its RNA into DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and then proceeds to replicate itself using the cell's machinery." (Medline, NIH)
The drugs for it aren't perfect, but medical biologists are working on that.
But if you prefer the quack sites' paranoid delusions, go for it: it's your right to be as deluded as you want to be.
In defense of Shambala, I have READ that there are indeed people who have developed AIDS without testing positive for HIV and we all know that there many people who have tested positive for HIV who never go on the develope AIDS. I'm not a doctor, nor do I pretend to be one on TV, but I do know that medicine, as we know it, is more hit or miss than most of us realize. The very notion that ulcers could be caused by bacterial infection was dismissed and laughed at by the main stream medical establishment just a few short years ago, until they were proven wrong. Putting leaches on the body to draw out infection and coagulate the blood, once in vogue, then dismissed as quackery, is once again being utilized. We should all have the medical freedom to live or die by our choice of medical treatment without the state demanding that only one course of action be administered (IMHO). Free citizens make free choices, subjects are told what they must do.
That's true - medicine is not perfect, and subject to fashion. However, I think the odds are still better with Western medicine based on observable and replicable results than with a shaman of some type. Not all drugs work for all people. Some that are effective for the majority can kill a few exceptions.
Medicine *is* abit of a crap shoot, no doubt about it.
Judge Woodcock is practicing medicine without a license. He's looking at more time making small rocks out of big ones than she is.
To bad the judge cannot order medical care for the 48 million other people that don't have access to care in America.
just as an historical note. I can recall the mid 50's when some of the 'odd job' people were out of work, they would toss a brick through the local police station window, get sent to the county farm for 90 days to spend the winter months there. It was almost a yearly ritual. I of course would never suggest this as a course of action.....
Hear hear!
Or, the 6,000 people that go bankrupt every day that cannot pay thier medical bills.
I agree with Ms. Kaplan that one of the most disturbing aspects of this story is Judge Woodcock’s justification of his sentence, that is, his wish “to protect the public from [Ms. Tuleh’s] further crime.” It is clear that Judge Woodcock sees himself as an appointed moral authority, not a legal one, and while the lines between the two are not always clear, their unchecked conflation has dangerous consequences. What “public,” exactly, does Judge Woodcock see himself protecting from Ms. Tuleh’s “further crimes”? If he claims he would have honored the original sentence urged by both the federal prosecutor and the defense attorney had Ms. Tuleh not been pregnant with HIV, then it is quite obvious, as Ms. Kaplan points out, that Judge Woodcock sees Ms. Tuleh’s condition (being pregnant with HIV) as her primary crime, a crime worthy of a sentence that exceeds even the federal sentencing guideline recommendations. This excess, the Judge claims, is for the safety of the public, but what exactly is he protecting us, the vulnerable public, from? From Ms. Tuleh’s further pregnancy and HIV contraction during the term of her current pregnancy? The whole line of justification is absurd, and Judge Woodcock’s motive sadly transparent. Whether you see Ms. Tuleh as “reprehensible” or “less responsible” given the choices she has made in her life, or if you feel entitled to jump to conclusions about the circumstances that led to her “crash[ing] the border,” or simply feel that women who are unwed mothers are worthy of scorn, the fact remains that a gross injustice has been committed in our legal system, one that has the potential to set a disturbing precedent for future cases like this unfortunate one.
Those are "choices" only if conditions support their success. Otherwise they're foolish mistakes.
My issue w Ms Kaplan's spin was the notion that Tuleh was arrested for being pregnant and having HIV. Tuleh was arrested for fraud, for breaking the law. As for the rest, the social engineering, the ridiculous pretext that she may cause harm in the future is too much like "Minority Report" for comfort. I always agreed the judge's sentence and explanations were excessive and paternalistic.
It is a gross injustice, yes, but be clear on the specific injustice. arrest for border crashing is not an injustice. Woodcock's social engineering is.
What kind of studies have they done to prove that the drug they give mothers to prevent HIV being transferred to the fetus is safe for the fetus and will not cause harm to the body or mind years later? I know in Africa they claim that the drug is safe, but how thorough and efficient is the study? Women can't even take an aspirin without a Doctor's permission for fear of hurting the fetus. This is a tragic case for the mother and fetus. I don't think that the judge has the right to sentence the pregnant woman for a longer time. He may be doing more harm to the fetus by interfering.No one can judge Ms. Tuleh's morality as far as the private circumstances of her pregnancy and HIV status.
If this woman faced 114 days for HIRING an illegal immigrant, lying about it on Fed Tax Forms, and was blue-eyed, a Vassar grad, HIV+ & pregnant, the sentence would have been SUSPENDED, "so she can tend to her health, and that of her unborn baby's." Woodcock would explain in THAT decision. Racist.
You know what? that's really true! It's very unjust to see illegal immigrants being rounded up and those who exploit them free to exploit another batch.
And are the authorities heartbroken over ht fate of all those bereft children of illegal immigrants waiting in vain for mommy an daddy to return - what about their health?
Welcome to Samuel Butlers "Erewhon" where they lock up the sick in prisons.