The California Assembly’s Health Committee passed a bill last week to allow women to use medical techniques to conceive using the sperm of an HIV-positive prospective father without risk of transmitting the virus that causes AIDS.

Gay.com reported last Thursday that under current California law, prospective fathers who are HIV positive may not use assisted reproduction technology to enable a female partner to conceive.

But modern technology allows the sperm from HIV positive men to be rendered safe and virus-free.

“All families deserve access to the tools that reproductive science has to offer,” said Democratic Sen. Carole Migden, who introduced the bill, in a written statement.

“In this case, California law needs to catch up with technology because, whether inadvertent or not, it discriminates against HIV-positive men” Midgen continued. “My legislation will ensure equal reproductive rights for all women, regardless of their partners’ HIV status.”

The provision that prevents women from receiving sperm from HIV positive men is part of a larger law that bans the use of organs, tissues, and other biological material from HIV infected donors. Aside from Delaware, California is the only state that bans the practice of using virus-stripped sperm for conception, although the method has been available for a decade.

California and Delaware are the only states that bar the procedure, which has been available for 10 years.
The Gay.com story cited Migden’s office as saying that numerous studies from America and abroad confirm that modern assisted reproduction technologies are safe for use, demonstrating no transmission of HIV from donor to recipient with use of the modern techniques.

In the article, University of California, San Francisco’s Dr. Deborah Cohan cited the more than 4,000 instances of women receiving sperm from HIV positive men via the modern techniques, resulting in 700 births; not a single instance of HIV transmission has occurred either to the mother or the baby.

Dr. Cohan, who is the Medical Director of the Bay Area Perinatal AIDS Center, said, “I am thrilled at the prospect of being able to offer my patients a safe method of conceiving.”

Added Dr. Cohan, “With potent antiretroviral therapy now available, HIV-infected individuals live increasingly healthy and normal lives and many want to have families. With this important bill, we will be able to offer them a safe way of building healthy families.”

http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3=&id=21215

Trackback this Post | Feed on comments to this Post