While addressing one of South Africa’s first Health Wellness Summit’s, Helen Zille, a government official, suggested that people who have unprotected sex with multiple partners should be charged with attempted murder and be criminalized.  

This idea of criminalizing safe sex stemmed from the concern of the HIV virus spreading further and its’ toll it takes on all forms of society.  Her desire is to shift government policy from its focus of treating diseases to preventing them and promoting wellness and to curb the spread of HIV/Aids. She was quoted as saying that “it is quite unacceptable for men to have multiple partners, not use condoms and particularly to have inter-generational sex because that is how we spread HIV from generation to generation.”

These possible solutions to combatting the disease, in ONE’s opinion, are unjustifiable and misleading. ONE Condoms of course believes in absolute condom use however by criminalizing the HIV/Aids infection and people’s health behavior, a certain drop and refrain in HIV/Aids testing will ensue. There is a possible defense for the criminalizing of people who knowingly endangered the life of another by prosecution but this will difficult to prove in a courtroom.

ONE agrees that there is an overall behavioral change that needs to happen to stop the spread of the disease but criminalizing HIV-positive persons for their sexual behavior is not the answer. ONE Condoms supports the practice of safe sex and donates a portion of each sale to HIV prevention and education efforts at home and abroad.

What are your thoughts on criminalizing people who endangered the life of another by spreading the HIV/Aids virus?