EMAIL OF THE MID-DAY

“It is really refreshing to read your objection to the HIV scare tactics. They have always made me uneasy. I am a heterosexual non-drug using woman, and HIV has never struck close to me, but the scary ‘you have sex you might die’ refrain is inhumane, to my ears. Maybe because I am a person who would have been better off with more sex in my life, not less.
It has occurred to me that for much of the history of the human race the mortality rate for childbirth was such that having sex, for a woman, was about as dangerous as what today would be considered ‘unsafe’ sex. Maybe a lot more dangerous. The entire human race is built upon the willingness of women to take greater risks than we now consider acceptable. But that was sex between a man and a woman.”