Interim study will examine Oklahoma laws that criminalize spreading STIs, HIV
An interim legislative study will evaluate the criminalization of sexually transmitted infections and HIV in Oklahoma.
State Sens. Julia Kirt and Carri Hicks, both Democrats representing Oklahoma City, are co-sponsors of the study with the goal of educating and correcting misinformation on sexually transmitted infections (STI) and HIV. The study could also lead to renewed legislation to repeal several laws that criminalize intentionally spreading transmitted diseases.
Advocates say a public health response is more appropriate than a criminal sentence. Oklahoma’s laws currently carry a felony charge and two to five years in prison if a person is found to have intentionally or recklessly spread HIV, smallpox, syphilis or gonorrhea.
Kirt said her district covers an area with some of the most active testing facilities for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STD), and her constituents are concerned because the laws that criminalize intentional spreading also bring with them several stigmas that tend to stop people from getting tested.
“If adding a crime for those is what helps get people better, we wouldn’t have such problems,” she said.
Freedom Oklahoma Executive Director Nicole McAfee said she agreed with Kirt and said the study has been several years in the making.
Freedom Oklahoma, a local advocacy organization, started the conversation with local and national partners in public health, direct service providers and others involved with public health criminalization to look at Oklahoma’s laws that establish criminal penalties for intentionally tansmitting diseases such as HIV.
McAfee said Oklahoma needs “a sex education one-on-one and some of that real public health discussion so that we can better talk about sexually transmitted infections in ways that are a public health response and not a criminalization or sort of moralistic response.”
Some lawmakers, including Rep. Toni Hasenbeck, R-Elgin, say the reasons for criminalization relate to domestic violence. House Bill 3098, introduced this year, would have added several more diseases that could be criminalized. The bill passed the House to the Senate Public Safety Committee but did not advance further. It was sponsored by Sen. Jessica Garvin, R-Duncan.
In a written statement to The Oklahoman, Hasenbeck said she wants to pursue the legislation in the future and follow the study closely.
“Throughout my years of working on legislation addressing domestic abuse, I’ve heard countless stories from Oklahomans who were deliberately infected with diseases by a sexual partner,” she said. “These diseases sometimes cause severe, long-lasting consequences, like liver disease and infertility. Beyond the physical health implications, there’s the profound emotional distress of discovering that a trusted partner has knowingly and willfully inflicted harm.”
McAfee said that when Hasenbeck’s bill was discussed, it was clear that a stigma against people with STIs and HIV still existed. She said topics like testing status, dirty versus clean language, and intentionality were difficult “to dig into when there’s inadequate sex education and sexual health resources for many people.”
“I think we can all agree that we’ve learned a lot about sexual health since 1910, and maybe the responses that we had and came up with at that point in time should not be the same ones that we utilize today,” she said.
As of 2023, 34 states have laws that criminalize HIV exposure, but 13 states have “modernized” or repealed these laws, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Not the first time decriminalization has been proposed
Last year, Rep. Mauree Turner, D-Oklahoma City, introduced House Bill 2343 that would have repealed two 1910 laws that criminalized public exposure with a contagious disease and intentionally spreading smallpox, syphilis and gonorrhea, as well as a 1988 law that criminalized the intentional spreading of HIV/AIDS. The bill died in the House Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee.
McAfee said the conversation showed how little a lot of legislators know about HIV, especially in the modern sense.
“We heard a lot of misinformation repeated as fact from folks,” she said.
Old stigmas surface in modern politics
McAfee said the highest number of STI and HIV cases are often in rural areas where access to health services can be farther away and that Oklahoma ranks in the top seven states for rural transmission. She said people in smaller communities who receive services from providers at clinics who might be people they encounter on a regular basis might not want to risk having everyone know their health status.
“It’s really disappointing that all of these decades later when we know so much more, when there is a lot more prevention and treatment accessible, that we still have legislators whose knowledge of HIV/AIDS is rooted in sort of mid-’80s stigma and misinformation,” she said, adding that some “are governing from that basic fear or this desire to sort of impose morality on your folks, in particular, instead of realizing that this is a public health conversation.”
Kirt and McAfee said they want people to be more educated on the science and health aspects of STIs and HIV, reduce the stigma attached to the problems and encourage more testing.
Kirt said she would be interested in introducing legislation in the next session to address the laws. No date for holding the interim study has yet been set.
“We have to look at true bipartisan approaches to really solve problems instead of kind of short-term, short-sighted ways of approaching problems,” Kirt said.
