Katrina Haslip

Haslip died of complications from AIDS on December 2, 1992 in Manhattan. As the CDC’s expanded definition of AIDS became active in January 1993 she was not officially registered by the government as dying of AIDS.

Two weeks after her release from prison in 1990, Haslip broke her probation and joined women from ACT UP NYC to protest at Health and Human Services. The demonstration sought to pressure government agencies to include women in clinical trials of AIDS treatment and to recognize that HIV positive women displayed AIDS in ways that were unique from cisgender men – include pelvic inflammatory disease, persistent yeast infections, and cervical cancer. Also in 1990, attorney Terry M. McGovern filed a class action lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services to expand eligibility criteria for AIDS social security benefits. Haslip served as an advisor to that work and McGovern credits her advocacy in conjunction with the litigation as being instrumental to ensuring bacterical pneumonia was included in the CDC’s expanded criteria for AIDS along with cervical cancer in 1992. These expanded criteria are credited with increasing the number of women and intravenous drug users who were considered to have AIDS and eligible for disability benefits and laid the groundwork for further expansion to other symptoms exhibited by women. In an interview with the New York Times following the decision to expand eligbility, Haslip stated, "I am, and have been, a woman with AIDS despite the C.D.C. not wishing to count me. We have compelled them to."

In 1985 Haslip was incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Center for a pickpocketing conviction. During her incarceration she learned she was HIV positive though she did not know the source of the infection – Haslip was both a sex worker and the recipient of a blood transfusion prior to her incarceration. While incarcerated Haslip served as a law librarian and became well known by other incarcerated women. After observing terrible conditions for HIV positive women inside the prison – including segregation of HIV positive women to a decrepit infirmary unit – and the high degree of misinformation surrounding AIDS, Haslip co-founded ACE inside the prison in 1988 with other incarcerated women including Kathy Boudin and Judith Alice Clark to provide accurate education on living with HIV.

Haslip was born in 1959 in Niagara Falls, NY and was one of 12 children. She was Muslim.