by Netty Mayersohn, interviewed by Cory Ser Vaas

About the author: Netty Mayersohn is an assemblywoman from New York. Cory Ser Vaas is editor-in-chief of the Saturday Evening Post.

“It was the Tuskegee experiment all over again [from 1932–1972, the U.S. government conducted an experiment in which they withheld treatment from a group of African American men who were suffering from syphilis in order to track progression of the disease],” says Netty Mayersohn. The veteran New York assemblywoman was appalled when she discovered that New York hospitals were testing newborns for HIV but not informing the parents and doctors so that the babies could be treated. She “put her life on hold” for three years to pass legislation that would mandate HIV...