Let’s talk about AIDS, baby! Critiquing the HIV and AIDS Act, 2017 in India through a reproductive justice framework

The HIV and AIDS Act was enacted in India in 2017 to protect the right to privacy, bodily autonomy, and non-discrimination of Persons Living with HIV (PLHIV). Prior to the Act, HIV/AIDS-related jurisprudence in India developed largely through judicial decisions on privacy, health care, queer rights, and marriage. This jurisprudence stigmatised PLHIV and constructed them as threats to society. The Act sought to respond to such characterisations and affirmed several rights of PLHIV that were previously denied. This article uses the reproductive justice framework to analyse the scope and potential of the Act in furthering sexual and reproductive freedoms of PLHIV and their partners. The article argues that despite the various rights and anti-discrimination protections under the Act, the law is insufficient to address the systemic and structural issues affecting PLHIV. The Act is premised on the problematic assumption that PLHIV are ‘risky’ sexual subjects, which affects the construction of rights and benefits. Furthermore, the Act does not, and arguably cannot, holistically address the problems faced by PLHIV in sexual, marital, and familial relationships. These constraints are a crucial reminder of the larger limitation of law as a blunt policy tool that is unable to comprehensively address complex socio-legal issues.