PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Advocates and state legislators celebrated on Thursday the removal of the last reference to AIDS in the Pennsylvania criminal code.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday we are celebrating a historic step forward in Pennsylvania,\u201d said State Rep. Ben Waxman, one of the many lawmakers who have pushed for years to get the change.<\/p>\n
There used to be a lot of additional penalties for people with AIDS in the criminal code. It was a requirement for states seeking federal funds for AIDS treatment and research, imposed in the 90\u2019s as a means to reduce transmission. <\/p>\n
Rhonda Goldfein of the AIDS Law Project said it was misguided.<\/p>\n
\u201cCriminal penalties for living with HIV has never served an effective law enforcement purpose. No credible research has ever linked penalties with a reduction in HIV transmission,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Goldfein said over the years, most of the enhanced penalties were eliminated, except one that elevated sex work to a felony if any party involved had HIV. This week, the State House passed an overhaul of Pennsylvania\u2019s prostitution statutes that eliminated the provision.<\/p>\n
Representative Malcolm Kenyatta noted it passed with nearly unanimous support in both chambers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis should be proof positive to everybody, change is possible here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 Advocates and state legislators celebrated on Thursday the removal of the last reference to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[37,1057,20438,28,30,29,41492,2303],"class_list":["post-245581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-harrisburg","tag-health","tag-hiv-aids","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-pennsylvania-state-house","tag-public-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}