I vaguely remember reading, either in a text I was translating several years ago or in my research for this text, that part of the reason why there's a high risk of HIV transmission in unprotected vaginal intercourse is that the purpose of the uterus is to be a hospitable environment for any cells that enter it to hang out for a while and grow and multiply.
I can't find this text since it's several years old and I've forgotten who the client was, but, assuming my understanding is correct, I wonder if certain forms of birth control would reduce the risk of HIV transmission.
The IUD and certain types of oral contraceptives work by making the uterus less hospitable. It's more difficult for sperm and egg to meet and mate and develop and embryo and implant and start cellular division. I wonder if this also makes it less hospitable to HIV cells. Even a diaphragm would at least keep the HIV cells from making it into the uterus, which obviously isn't sufficient protection but might make the risk lower.
A quick google shows that birth control does not increase one's risk of HIV transmission (either male to female or female to male - no mention of female to female) and that it is safe for people with HIV to use birth control, but there's no mention of whether birth control reduces the risk. Does this mean it doesn't, or does this mean they haven't done the research?
2 comments:
It could be that if contraception does reduce HIV risk, no one wants to say, because the risk would still exist, and so much effort went into HIV/AIDS education that health educators don't want to take a chance at appearing to say the risk is ameliorated.
An editor once made me delete something in a book for teens that said the risk of HIV grows with repeated exposure and the risk of contracting HIV from a single exposure is very small. It is true and it made sense in context, but she felt that it bordered on condoning unprotected sex.
After seeing what some people do with Toronto Sun headlines, I get the idea of wanting to make safer information available to the general public. But I wish there was some way you could prove you're responsible enough to have the more nuanced information (other than, like, going to medical school). I'm not going to throw the condoms away because I'm on the pill, I'm just scientifically curious.
But at the same time, I've heard someone who was trying to conceive say "They lied to us in school! You can't get pregnant every single day of the month!" Which might be true from the perspective of your goal being to get pregnant (I'm not up on my fertility awareness), but I, being childfree, still need to use birth control every single day of the month.
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