DeSantis Country: Florida requires female student-athletes to report their menstrual history
Fear mounts that period tracking data can be used to further restrict reproductive freedom
As Ron DeSantis seeks to completely ban abortion, fears are mounting that period tracking data that Florida schools require student-athletes to submit could be subpoenaed and used as evidence against women and girls to further restrict their reproductive freedoms.
“Ron DeSantis has already signed an extreme abortion ban in Florida that includes no exceptions for victims of rape and incest, and his administration wants to go even further by scrapping Florida’s right to privacy. Handing over teenagers’ menstrual history to a third-party software company in Ron DeSantis’s Florida is flat-out dangerous,” said Florida Democratic Party spokesperson Travis Reuther.
From The Florida Times Union
Florida asks student athletes about their periods. Why some find it 'shocking' post-Roe
- All female athletes in the state also are asked to report their history of menstrual periods: When they got their first period, how many weeks pass between periods and when they had their last one, to name a few.
- This fall when some districts took the form to a digital platform kept by a third party, parents and doctors began raising red flags. Their concerns have been heightened both by a shifting political landscape criminalizing abortions and scrutinizing transgender athletes and the growing threat to medical privacy in a digital age. All of the forms — whether paper or digital — are subject to subpoena.
- Pediatricians are appalled that sensitive medical information is stored with the school district and that coaches can see it. "I don’t see why (school districts) need that access to that type of information," said Dr. Michael Haller, a pediatric endocrinologist based in Gainesville. "It sure as hell will give me pause to fill it out with my kid," he said of his own teenage children.
- This year in Palm Beach County, nearly all athlete registration forms were moved online — meaning the athletes' reproductive data is now stored by a third party, a software company launched in September 2021 named Aktivate. Broward, Hillsborough and Sarasota counties are also rolling out Aktivate in schools, according to Palm Beach County district officials.
- Abortion rights advocates who stress reproductive privacy in the wake of the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade worry that women's menstrual history may be used to prosecute them if they terminate a pregnancy.
- And a vocal contingent of parents want forms to stay offline in the name of their parental rights over their children's data — which they worry about being leaked or sold.
- "I think we're all on edge right now," Haller said. He added that he has "very little reason to have faith in our state leadership" to keep data provided to educational institutions private.
- Menstrual history and patient privacy have been cast in a new light following the Supreme Court's June 24 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to have an abortion.
- Abortion rights advocates quickly began to share fears that women's social media messages and period tracking data could be used against them. Those fears materialized in Nebraska this summer when police charged a 41-year-old woman and her teenage daughter with an illegal abortion and burning and burying the daughter's fetus.
- Police subpoenaed Facebook messages they say showed the teen's pregnancy was not miscarried as the two first contended: Jessica Burgess told her 17-year-old daughter in a message to take abortion pills that she had obtained to end the teen's 23-week pregnancy, police say.
- Burgess and her daughter were charged with a felony for removing, concealing or abandoning a body. After investigators reviewed the Facebook messages, the prosecutor added a felony charge of illegally performing an abortion. Both women have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.
Source: Florida Dems