Can you sue someone for giving you HPV? (And win $1.5 million?)

The answer to both questions is yes — if you can prove they cheated on you. The recent Iowa case, that awarded a woman $1.5 million for past physical pain and suffering, past mental pain and suffering, future mental pain and suffering and punitive damages should feel like a feminist gain. After all, her ex-partner cheated on her with two other women, one of whom eventually gave birth to his child. It seems that the major issue according to Judge Amanda Potterfield, the woman who presided over the case, wasn’t just that the dentist transmitted a communicable disease but that he did not exercise reasonable care not to.

I certainly agree that this man was a negligent ass-hat but this ruling is problematic and could potentially backfire for women as a collective. For starters, some of the evidence used in the case to prove that this man was negligent was the fact that he “received medical training and should be aware of the risks associated with communicable diseases.” While one wonders whether women cheated on by lesser educated men would have the same claim, I can’t help but feel slighted by the presumed sexual illiteracy of the woman in question.

Let’s make one thing clear: every woman who has sex with a man puts
herself at risk to contract HPV. This is because, there is no test
available for men. Also, men and women can contract HPV through
skin-to-skin contact. Thus, even if the dentist was a man who had never
had sex without a condom in his life, she would have been at risk.
Further, even if Evans claimed to be “clean,” there is no such thing as
a clean bill of health when it comes to STIs. There is no “test for
everything.” Everyone is assessed on a case-by-case basis and the
number of tests people actually receive is based on what they are
willing to disclose and in some cases, the economic constraints of the
clinic.

I don’t blame this woman, or any woman, for not knowing this. The
state of misinformation on sexual health is the fault of the lack of
medically accurate, comprehensive sexual education in America. However,
HPV is an STI that many women contract. On my campus,
10 percent of the women who were tested had it. And physicians at local
University Health Services estimate that 30 to 50 percent of women get
HPV while they are at college. But it’s also worth stating that while I
wouldn’t wish a colposcopy
on Condoleeza Rice, 90 percent of women who are under 30 clear HPV
within 2 years. Thus, this decision raises some questions about whether
young women who contract HPV while they are involved with cheating
partners can be reasonably awarded $500,000 for future mental pain and
suffering.

But most of all, my issue with this ruling is with the potential it
has to come back and bite women. By and large, one sector of the
population has the burden of STI screening when it comes to HPV: women.
Since we can only be tested, the potential for men to claim that women
are negligent who do not disclose will likely be higher…