Acknowledgments; Note on Statistics and Transliteration; Abbreviations; Prologue: Into the Well and Out Again; 1. Birth in the Age of AIDS; 2. India Responds to the Epidemic; 3. "The HIV Test Is Like an Immunization": Scenes from Prenatal HIV Counseling; 4. "I Don't Need My Husband's Permission": Women's Views on HIV/AIDS and Decisions About Prenatal Testing; 5. HIV/AIDS and the Gendering of Stigma; 6. To Birth or Not to Birth? : Constraints and Pragmaticsin HIV-Positive Women's Childbearing Decisions; 7. HIV-Positive Women Give Birth: Deception and Determination
8. Breast or Bottle? : HIV-Positive Women's Responses to Global Health Policy on Infant Feeding9. Creating a Storm: Activists' Hopes and Mothers' Fears; Epilogue: Memory Boxes; Notes; Bibliography; Index
Summary
Birth in the Age of AIDS is a vivid and poignant portrayal of the experiences of HIV-positive women in India during pregnancy, birth, and motherhood at the beginning of the 21st century. The government of India, together with global health organizations, established an important public health initiative to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child. While this program, which targets poor women attending public maternity hospitals, has improved health outcomes for infants, it has resulted in sometimes devastatingly negative consequences for poor, young mothers because these women
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-264) and index
