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Reproductive Decision‐Making in the Age of AIDS
Author(s) -
BradleySpringer Lucy A.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
image: the journal of nursing scholarship
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.009
H-Index - 80
eISSN - 1547-5069
pISSN - 0743-5150
DOI - 10.1111/j.1547-5069.1994.tb00321.x
Subject(s) - psychological intervention , abortion , abandonment (legal) , medicine , sister , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , isolation (microbiology) , family medicine , pregnancy , demography , psychology , nursing , sociology , political science , law , biology , genetics , microbiology and biotechnology
The forecast for the HIV epidemic in the United States includes increasing numbers of infected women and children, the latter of whom will be born to infected mothers. As the epidemic progresses, nurses will be more frequently called on to assist women in making difficult reproductive decisions. Using four levels of analysis, this discussion explores current knowledge about reproduction in HIV‐infected women and suggests interventions and nursing actions. Beth is a 32‐year‐old mother with a history of drug use. She was tested for the HIV when she was 8 months pregnant at the urging of her sister. She was surprised when the test was positive and unprepared for the events that followed: abandonment by her obstetrician, delivery at a strange hospital, and isolation on the post‐partum unit. Her 5‐year‐old son is not infected . Carmen, now 17 years old, was infected with HIV through sexual activity at age 14. When she became pregnant at 16, her doctor told her not to have the baby. Despite religious convictions and personal desires, she had an abortion. She says, “That may have been my only chance to have a baby and now it's gone.”