[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 114 (Wednesday, September 5, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H5376-H5377]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       HIV/AIDS IN AMERICAN WOMEN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I too come to the floor this evening to 
discuss a serious women's issue at a time when the women in the House 
are focused, as we approach the end of the session, on health issues. I 
want to remind the House that it is time to get serious about HIV and 
AIDS in women in the United States.
  I have come to the floor with shocking statistics about AIDS 
worldwide where 50 percent of those with AIDS are women and, in Africa 
and Asia, whole continents are being engulfed with the disease. But we 
have not done our work here, and so with this emphasis this evening on 
health, I want to focus on preventing a preventable disease in women. 
What began as a so-called homosexual disease, we have quickly found out 
was a universal disease. But we have not targeted information and 
education about AIDS in women as a women's disease, and that is what 
this is.
  There are two groups of women we need to focus on especially, very 
young women and women of color, because that is where the epidemic is. 
Among very young women between 13 and 24, half of the reported cases 
are women, 49 percent. And women of color, black and Hispanic women, 
are only a quarter of the population, but they are three-quarters of 
the AIDS cases. This is a wake-up call, I say to my colleagues.
  What to do? First, we have not reached many women once. We have had 
better luck reaching men, because

[[Page H5377]]

we have targeted them. After we reach them once, we had better reach 
them every 3 or 4 years, because as a whole new group of young women 
and young men, they never got reached in the first place, because they 
were too young. That is the way this sexually transmitted disease 
works. If they only knew. It is what they do not know that will hurt 
them.
  Forty percent of women are infected through a partner. They do not 
know that what the partner does with bring home the disease. Twenty-
seven percent are infected through needles. If they only knew. If they 
only knew that if they press their communities to have programs that 
are explicit about this disease in shelters for runaways, in youth 
detention centers, in schools, we could begin to reach girls. This is 
where the young women are. This is where the women of color are.
  What can we do in this House? Let us hasten the science on the female 
condom. It is time women took control of preventing this disease, and 
the female condom, with NIH working much more aggressively on it, would 
be one way. Microbicides that a woman can use quickly to destroy the 
virus before it takes hold, and combination antiretroviral therapies 
that can reduce the risk to newborns. Only 5 percent of newborns get 
the disease by transmission from the mother if women have access to 
these therapies.
  Mr. Speaker, it costs $10,000 to $12,000 a year to take those pills 
after one gets the disease. We are talking about a disease that women 
do not have to get in the first place. We have not targeted them. 
First, we targeted homosexuals. That was wrong. We should have targeted 
the whole population, but we had some success targeting homosexuals, 
although that group is beginning to get the disease again.
  Then we targeted men generally. We have targeted people of color 
without being very specific about who they are.
  The fact is that nobody has targeted women of color, nobody is 
targeting very young women where the disease is spreading like wildfire 
and where the very young are quickly becoming half, half of all of 
those with the AIDS/HIV virus.
  We come to the floor talking about diseases that we want more science 
about. We want more science about this. But most of the diseases we 
talk about, we cannot prevent. What makes this so heartbreaking is that 
we can prevent it. What makes it especially heartbreaking as to women 
is that they pass the disease on to their children.
  We have not begun to work to prevent AIDS in women as we have in men. 
We have not begun to tell them the whole story. We who talk about sex 
all the time do not talk about the kind of sex that can kill people. It 
is time that we took a hold of this disease, as we can, especially as 
it now begins to spread and become a disease among the young where half 
of those getting it are women.

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