Budget Cuts Spell Crisis for Women with HIV

Rallies for workers' rights in Wisconsin and other states have raised critical awareness about the potential implications -- and targets -- of budget cuts across the US. But in addition to the fate of unions and public sector employees at the local and state level -- the majority of whom are women -- the battle over budgets will also determine the fate of key social services, many of them on which women and children in particular depend.

Nothing makes this more real for us at the Ms. Foundation than when our grantees report how budget cuts will impact -- indeed, threaten -- their own programs and their own communities. For example, just a few weeks ago, the Washington Department of Health decided to cut funding for the state's only women-specific HIV/AIDS education and support program -- a program run by Seattle-based BABES Network-YWCA, our longtime grantee. This decision, BABES tells us, along with an additional funding cut at the county level, will result in a 75 percent reduction in their program budget -- an untenable outcome that will leave hundreds of women without critical support services.

In a press release issued yesterday on National Girls and Women HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, Pat Migliore, an HIV-positive Seattle resident and BABES co-founder, said, "BABES serves 400 women and affected family members every year. This will have a huge consequence for the health of women we are desperately seeking to keep in care."

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