AEGiS-APPJ: Comprehensive AIDS Legislation in Social Perspective: The New Rhode Island AIDS Law

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1988. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Comprehensive AIDS Legislation in Social Perspective: The New Rhode Island AIDS Law

AIDS & Public Policy Journal 3, no. 4 (1988): 34-41
H. Denman Scott, Barbara DeBuono and Avery Colt

On June 3, 1988, the Rhode Island legislature enacted a comprehensive law relating to AIDS testing, confidentiality, and discrimination. The enacted legislation is substantially the same as proposed by the Department of Health, but it was strengthened in many ways during the legislative process. The bill was the subject of four months of intense discussion in the Governor's AIDS Advisory Council, followed by three months of even more intense debate during legislative hearings before it was passed by both houses and signed by Governor DiPrete. During this process, two related principles began to dominate the health department's thinking, namely, that wider HIV testing was essential to good public health practice at this point in the epidemic and that expanded testing was unacceptable without simultaneous guarantees that these subjects' civil liberties would be protected. The tension between these principles, and their interdependence, established the dynamic that resulted in the Rhode Island AIDS law. These issues are not unique to Rhode Island, but our resolution of the issues should be of interest to all who are wrestling with problems of AIDS policy. The purpose of this paper is to describe the Rhode Island AIDS law and the rationale for some of its key provisions.
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