Accountability and Acknowledgement. That’s what is missing! Oregon law fails to even acknowledge the profound harm caused when someone knowingly hides an STI from a partner. This legal silence allows a deeply personal betrayal to escalate into permanent injury, infertility, and life-threatening trauma without consequence.

We demand that our laws first acknowledge this specific form of harm, and then establish real accountability for actions that irrevocably destroy another person’s health, body, and future.

My name is Rachel and what happened to me should never happen to another woman. 

I survived two dangerous ectopic pregnancies. I now live with permanent infertility

Before any of this happened, I was a woman building a life. I wasn’t reckless. I wasn’t careless. I wasn’t informed. I was trusting. I was doing what women have done forever — believing the person I shared my home and my body with. I was loyal. I was committed. I believed that honesty was the foundation of intimacy, and I paid for that trust with parts of myself I will never get back. 

A ex-partner chose to stay silent. He hid his STI diagnosis from me. He had been getting treatment for it months before. I only discovered the truth by accident—finding a half-empty pill bottle. Not through honesty. Not through a doctor’s warning or test results. He walked around for 6 month knowing he was infected, I walked around for 6 months with an infection silently crawling around destroying my body. 

I got tested and confirmed the same day I found the half empty pill bottle, the doctor did not educate me on what the risks there was for prolong treatment for this STI that had been given to me. 

I moved on with my life, got into a new relationship, became engaged, planning a future, and starting a family… silence cost me my fertility. It almost cost me my life.

The Medical Trauma I Survived:  10.10.2018: My very first pregnancy,  as anyone would be exceptionally thrilled. Things were going great. Life was moving forward we were thriving… that ended 6 weeks into my pregnancy. I was rushed to the hospital, cramping and bleeding. The ultrasound room…we saw our baby, wiggling and alive, and by accident of the nurses unmuted the ultrasound and we got to hear our baby’s heart fluttering and in the same breath, they told us that neither I or the baby would survive without immediate emergency surgery. My fallopian tube ruptured on the operation table...

I learned from the doctor cutting pieces of me out of me, the untreated infection had caused scarring and irreversible damage, including damage to my liver capsule. Fitz-Huge-Curtis syndrome. I now suffer from these thin violin strings adhesions attached to my abdominal wall. Chronic and painful.

I ended up getting pregnant again… I was terrified the moment I saw positive on the pregnancy test I had taken at home…my nightmare wasn’t over.

12.11.2018: I found myself back in the hospital. Same pain, less bleeding… ruling out everything that it couldn’t be from, the emergency doctor that night thought the best course of action since I had an ectopic only 2 months ago…Methotrexate. One shot was ordered. One single injection of Methotrexate.. 

To happily educate those who are unfamiliar with Methotrexate, is a versatile prescription medication used primarily to treat certain types of cancer by slowing cell growth, and as an immunosuppressant for severe autoimmune diseases it is commonly use for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, psoriasis arthritis., Chron’s disease and various cancers, including Leukemia,Breast cancer and to end pregnancies due to the high life-threatening risks. The injection is administered into the hip muscle… If your lucky. When I was given this shot that basically gave me the chance to save my one last fallopian tube…the nurse that administrated it to me, had gotten distracted by another patient screaming rooms down from me… that shot did not make it deep into my hip muscle, for proper absorption. I felt it all leak out on my skin… the ectopic pregnancy had continued to progress… I was back at the hosptial less than 24 hours later. Terrified and confused.  

12.12.2018: Another ectopic pregnancy , this time it ruptured while I was getting ready for surgery…. This time, I went into shock in a hospital bathroom. I survived a Code Blue, thanks to my fiancee jumping into action due to the lack of the nurse not paying attention to what was going on.  despite losing nearly half of my blood. Surgeons removed my last remaining fallopian tube. My ability to ever carry a pregnancy was gone forever. I woke up from that surgery wrecked. Two blood fusion, My body was pushed to the edge of death, and I found my life in complete disarray.

Physical Harm: My body is permanently altered. I live with the internal scars, the trauma of near-death, and the irreversible loss of my reproductive organs.

Reproductive Harm: My fundamental ability to conceive and carry a child was stolen. This is not a "choice" that was taken; it is a biological capacity destroyed.

Emotional & Psychological Harm: I endure complex PTSD, anxiety, and a grief that is both profound and disenfranchised—grief for children I will never meet, for a motherhood I was violently barred from.

Existential Harm: A lifetime of moments, memories, and love has been erased. I am haunted by the ghosts of a future I will never have that.

Silence stole from me every future I had dared to imagine. I will never hold my baby. 

Never feel tiny fingers wrap around mine.

Never see first steps, kiss a scraped knee,

or hang up drawings or report cards on the fridge.

I won't ever cheer at school games or argue about curfews.

I won't cry with pride at graduations. give advice during heartbreak.

I will never be able to hug my childern.

I will never hear "Happy Mother’s Day."

I will never know who my children would have become...

These losses were not fate. They were the direct result of a deliberate silence.   


The Legal Gap That Endangers Every Woman in Oregon: Oregon law currently fails women. It sees this catalog of harm and calls it a "private matter".

There are no meaningful consequences for someone who knowingly hides an STI—even when that choice causes permanent reproductive damage, life-threatening emergencies, infertility, and profound trauma.

This is a contradiction. Oregon public health law clearly classifies infections like gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, and herpes as communicable diseases, that must be reported by healthcare providers to the state. The system recognizes the seriousness of these infections for public health surveillance. Yet, it offers zero protection to an individual when their intimate partner knowingly withholds this exact same critical health information, directly causing “private” devastation.

A Clarification on HIV & Legal Parity We recognize that Oregon, like many states, has specific criminal statutes regarding the knowing exposure or transmission of HIV.

Our demand is not to weaken those existing laws, but to strengthen and expand the principle behind them to include all sexually transmitted infections that can cause severe, permanent harm.

It is a contradiction and an injustice to legally acknowledge the serious harm of knowingly exposing a partner to one severe infection (HIV), while offering no recourse to a woman whose reproductive future is destroyed by another (like prolong-untreated Chlamydia or Gonorrhea). The severity of the harm—whether it is a lifelong chronic illness or permanent infertility—must be recognized, and the knowing choice to conceal any such infection must carry legal accountability.

My proposed reforms seek to create a consistent legal standard: Knowingly concealing a diagnosed infection that poses a significant risk of severe physical harm to a partner is a wrongful act.

This principle protects all Oregonians, regardless of the specific pathogen involved. This is about accountability. This is about human decency. This is about prevention, protection, and justice... Worse still, the law’s structure actively denies survivors justice.

The statute of limitations for legal action often expires before a woman even knows she has been harmed. The clock starts ticking from the date of exposure of the infection, not from the date the catastrophic damage—like infertility—is discovered. 
In my case, my irreversible harm was not discovered until  later, during my first pregnancy. By the time I was able connected the dots, the legal window had slammed shut on me. The person who caused this lifelong injury faces zero accountability.

 The system protects the perpetrator and punishes the victim twice: first by stealing her health and future, and then by denying her any path to justice.

Oregon law already recognizes that when someone drives drunk, they are knowingly creating a risk that can cause bodily harm. If they injure someone, the law treats it as a serious offense — because the driver made a choice that removed someone else’s safety and consent.  

We recognize that withholding critical information in other contexts is a violation. But when someone hides an STI—a conscious choice that can destroy a woman’s body, autonomy, and future—Oregon law looks away.

This is a violation of consent. This is reproductive harm. This is a critical women’s rights issue.

What We Are Demanding of Oregon Lawmakers: We call on you to enact legislation that:

1. Strengthens STI Nondisclosure Laws: Create clear legal accountability for individuals who knowingly expose partners to infection without disclosure.

2. Recognizes Reproductive Harm as Serious Bodily Injury: Legally acknowledge that damage to fertility and reproductive organs constitutes grave harm.

 3. Reforms the Statute of Limitations: Ensure the clock for seeking justice starts when the injury is discovered or reasonably could have been discovered, not from the date of initial exposure of infection.

4. Improves Medical Communication: Mandate clearer patient education on the long-term risks of untreated STIs, including infertility and ectopic pregnancies and so on.

5. Protects Young Women: Ensure our laws shield those who trust their partners and are left with irreversible consequences...   


 Why Your Signature Matters: Every signature declares that a woman’s body, future, and life deserve protection. Every signature demands accountability for actions that cause lifelong harm.

 
Every signature affirms that basic human decency must be upheld by our laws.

Every signature helps build the political will to close these lethal legal gaps and save others from this pain.

Please, sign and share this petition. Help us bring this issue out of the shadows and into the center of Oregon’s fight for women’s rights, bodily autonomy, and true reproductive justice.

Silence nearly killed me. Silence stole my future.

Together, we can make sure silence never steals another woman’s body and dreams.

 

  — Rachel