An Associated Press dispatch from Albany, New York, November 22, 1996:

If released, the results of newborn AIDS testing could give fathers ammunition in child custody battles and could mean an increase in domestic violence, AIDS activists claim.

The state will soon require mothers be told whether tests indicate their newborn has been exposed to HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The results of that test will go into a baby's medical records, making the results available to the baby's father.

This will give the father information on the mother's condition, activists said, since a positive antibodies test for the newborn means the mother is infected with the AIDS virus.

"There's a lot of documented domestic violence that has occurred in response to positive HIV test results for women," said Virginia Shubert, an attorney with Housing Works, which helps homeless AIDS victims.

Fathers could use that information against the mother in a custody battle, Shubert told Friday's Albany Times Union.

Earlier this year, lawmakers passed a bill giving the Health Department authority to require the test results be made available to new mothers. The new regulation, proposed last month, hasn't been enacted yet.

Shubert said the law amounts to forced AIDS testing for mothers, who will lose the confidentiality of their own medical condition when the infant's father reads the test results, Shubert said.

Health Department spokesman Robert Hinckley confirmed that fathers would have the right to see their children's test results.

"We're not looking to deny fathers' access to their children's medical records," Hinckley said.

HIV-infected mothers transmit the virus to their babies in about one in four cases.

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