Philippines: Dictating choices, risking lives

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Doe-eyed and frail, with a mellow voice and a cheery smile, nothing about Sara (not her real name) suggested she had been through ordeal after ordeal in her 22 years. Forcibly married at 15 to a much older man, she discovered after the marriage that her husband had HIV, and that he had infected her. When her in-laws found out, they subjected her to a barrage of abuse and accused her of infecting her husband. Before he died, her husband apologized to her: Deported as a migrant worker from Malaysia for testing HIV positive, he knew he was positive before he married her. He told her he had not known much, though, about HIV itself, how it is transmitted, or that condoms could have kept him and her from becoming infected.

Doe-eyed and frail, with a mellow voice and a cheery smile, nothing about Sara (not her real name) suggested she had been through ordeal after ordeal in her 22 years. Forcibly married at 15 to a much older man, she discovered after the marriage that her husband had HIV, and that he had infected her.

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