What a pregnant woman does not know can hurt her baby, particularly when the subject is HIV and the goal is preventing mother-to-child transmission. That's why New Jersey was right to enact a law, signed this week, requiring HIV testing for all pregnant women and their babies.
If doctors know a pregnant woman is HIV-positive, they can use anti-AIDS medicine to block transmission of the virus during pregnancy, delivery or breast feeding.
In the past, health care professionals have been required to offer the test, and when the reasons for doing so were presented as they should be, women overwhelmingly agreed to get tested.
A mandate, however, offers assurances that no one will make subjective decisions about which women are at risk and which do not need to be educated and encouraged to take the test. Unfortunately, some women who believed they were in safe, monogamous relationships found out otherwise after delivering HIV-positive babies.
Still, testing should be part of caring, informed treatment. It should not be presented as an accusatory confrontation. As important as HIV testing is, it must be done in a way that does not give any woman reason to be concerned about the consequences of seeking prenatal care.
And as with all medical testing and treatment, this mandate must be carried out with scrupulous respect for accuracy and privacy. Advocates for AIDS victims are right when they say that HIV-infected people are still subjected to stigma and discrimination. In this case, however, the benefits of preventing HIV in babies outweigh the risks.
The law takes effect in six months. There are provisions to let women opt out of the testing. If they do, their babies will be tested soon after delivery -- but the best bet for prevention is to know the mother's HIV status so treatment can begin before birth.
In fact, doctors at University Hospital in Newark say that because of a strong education and testing program there, in the past six years none of the HIV-infected patients who received prenatal care at University has had an HIV-positive baby.
Everyone should aim for such results.