HIV-positive and deliberately pregnant?
To many people who are not directly affected by HIV this sounds very academic and hypothetical. For them, the terms 'HIV-infection' and 'AIDS' are directly related to serious illness, invalidity and death. They can't believe that HIV-positive people are even thinking of having children.

Yet due to modern drugs, for many people with HIV their infection has become a chronic disease, something to literally 'live with' and comparable to other chronic diseases like diabetes or asthma. Why shouldn't children belong to such a life?

Here are some of the arguments often discussed about women with HIV becoming pregnant.

Should a woman with HIV be allowed to have a child?
For most people, having children is fundamental part of human life. Why should someone with HIV feel any different about this? Why shouldn't people with a chronic disease be as loving and good parents as any other parent?

Who has the right to tell others that they should or should not have children? Isn't this a question that only the couple concerned can decide? After all, having a baby is a fundamental human right - how can we deny this to anyone?

Isn't it irresponsible and unethical towards the child if an HIV-positive woman becomes pregnant when there is even the slightest chance that the child might get infected?
Is there a right to have a child, in any situation, regardless if you are healthy or not? What about the argument that by having a child, an HIV-positive woman might be causing harm to another human being - namely her child? Even if the risk of infection has become very small under good treatment, there is still a risk of the child being born HIV-positive. Such a child might face a short life and severe illness, even pain.

Isn't it very selfish of a woman to wish for a child in such circumstances? However, is it better not to be born at all, or to be born with a severe illness?

Isn't it selfish to have a child, if you might die before it grows up?
Thanks to modern drugs the life expectancy of people with HIV has increased dramatically, and many of them might look forward to years of a more or less 'normal' life. But nobody knows in advance how long the drugs will work in an individual patient. Severe side effects might occur or the virus might develop resistance. Nobody can tell if the individual father or mother will live long enough to guide his or her child into adulthood.

On the other hand who knows in advance when they will die or if they will live long enough to see their child grow up. Everyone could die tomorrow, maybe in a car accident or in a plane crash, or perhaps falling ill with a serious disease like cancer.

And, isn't the wish for a child often partly also the wish to live on through your children after death? Isn't such a wish especially understandable if the person in question knows that she might die early?

Isn't this treatment all very expensive? Can we afford to pay for it?
Modern antiretroviral combination therapy is high tech medicine, which is very expensive. In addition to the drugs there are also the necessary periodic tests like the determination of the viral load and the t-cell numbers in the patient's blood.

With health insurance systems close to break down, can we afford to pay for the medical guidance of such a pregnancy and for the special demands of the delivery just because somebody who is not healthy wants to have a child? What about the costs for the lifelong treatment of the child if he or she is born with HIV or for the care of the child if the mother or father falls seriously ill with AIDS or dies?