Last August, two months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, dad and mom in Florida’s Palm Beach County School District started elevating questions a few rule requiring the state’s student-athletes to submit detailed medical historical past kinds to their colleges previous to sports activities participation.
For not less than 20 years, the kinds have included a set of optionally available questions on college students’ menstrual cycles. But now, with abortion criminalized in lots of states, there’s higher concern that menstrual information might be weaponized to determine or prosecute individuals who have terminated pregnancies. (In 2022, Florida handed a ban on abortions after 15 weeks, and its management has signaled curiosity in additional limiting entry to the process.)
And this college 12 months, the Palm Beach County college district started providing college students the choice to submit the shape by way of a third-party software program product, resulting in a very excessive degree of alarm about information privateness.
Some district dad and mom needed the interval questions gone. The episode additionally raised bigger questions on whether or not any of the medical information collected by these kinds ought to be held by a faculty or a district in any respect.
Over the course of a number of conferences, the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA), which makes the principles governing pupil involvement at school sports activities statewide, leaned right into a hardline place on each questions.
In January, the group’s sports activities drugs committee beneficial making the menstrual historical past questions obligatory and requiring college students to show their responses over to the college, based on the Palm Beach Post’s reporting.
Florida wasn’t the one state to ask student-athletes for his or her menstrual histories. In reality, a minority of states — solely 10 — explicitly instruct student-athletes to maintain menstrual info and different well being information non-public.
Regardless, the proposal to require this info was terribly onerous to justify: It created privateness dangers and defied the suggestions of nationwide medical associations, and was at jarring odds with the state’s prevailing instructional developments, which have prioritized parental rights over nearly everything else.
In the tip, the proposal failed after it attracted nationwide scrutiny and prompted debates about what entities ought to have entry to menstrual info. On February 9, the Florida High School Athletic Association voted to undertake a brand new medical analysis kind that doesn’t embody questions on menstrual historical past. Instead, college students will submit an eligibility kind that incorporates no medical particulars.
(Also on February 9, Florida Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and two different representatives introduced federal laws that may prohibit publicly funded colleges from requiring college students to report menstrual info.)
In a microcosm, the episode drives residence a brand new actuality of post-Roe America: Period information ought to solely be shared between sufferers and their well being care suppliers.
Periods are signifiers of well being, and folks ought to speak about them — with their clinicians
Menstrual cycles are such an necessary signifier of well being that many well being care suppliers name intervals the “fifth vital sign.” In athletes specifically, interval adjustments can signify an individual isn’t getting sufficient energy to offset excessive ranges of exercise.
So sure, athletes with intervals ought to watch and search take care of adjustments of their cycles, mentioned Judy Simms-Cendan, a Miami-based pediatric and adolescent gynecologist and president-elect of the North American Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology.
“But the physician or clinician assessment of a menstrual history, and what it may or may not signify, is different than a school’s use of that information,” mentioned Simms-Cendan. Coaches aren’t normally well being care suppliers, so that they’re not geared up to medically consider folks based mostly on menstrual signs. But additionally — and crucially — colleges and sports activities packages are usually not required to maintain well being info non-public in accordance with federal HIPAA legal guidelines. (Schools are topic to different guidelines about sharing pupil information, however these guidelines allow entry to information for a broader vary of causes than HIPAA does.)
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) publishes separate kinds for medical suppliers to finish when evaluating an athlete previous to their participation in a sport. One kind is only for the well being care supplier’s eyes: a bodily analysis kind that features a warning that it’s to not be shared with colleges or sports activities organizations. Then there’s a separate eligibility kind for the doctor to share with the college, with a lot much less room for element.
The AAP retains pointless medical particulars off the eligibility kind for a motive, mentioned Simms-Cendan. “That’s nobody’s business. You shouldn’t have to disclose it, because it doesn’t have anything to do with your sports activity,” she mentioned.
Good arguments in opposition to (and no arguments for) sharing interval info outdoors a clinician’s workplace
Parents’ fears round sharing their children’ well being information with colleges are rightly grounded. Without HIPAA safety, disclosing well being info can threaten people’ proper to privateness.
Less scrupulous period-tracking apps additionally pose dangers, as do some apps aimed toward treating habit problems, depression, and HIV. In 2019, the director of the Missouri well being division was caught utilizing a period-tracking spreadsheet to determine sufferers who might have had “failed” abortions; there’s good motive to worry that an activist state authorities in search of to criminalize abortion would try to make use of interval info tracked on-line in service of that aim.
It was unclear why the FHSAA’s sports activities drugs committee was so wanting to have Florida colleges collect menstrual information from the state’s student-athletes, or how they may use that information to discriminate in opposition to college students.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reportedly favors a near-total ban on abortion, and in 2021, he signed a invoice barring transgender ladies from enjoying on ladies’ groups in public colleges. Could the questions have been supposed to determine and punish college students who don’t conform to the state’s gender politics?
The questions — which ask concerning the date of menstrual onset and the timing and frequency of intervals — wouldn’t have yielded the sort of information that may assist determine teenagers in search of abortion providers, utilizing contraception, or getting evaluated for sexually transmitted infections. They would have been poor screening inquiries to determine transgender college students.
(The new medical eligibility kind has been revised to incorporate a non-optional query indicating the coed’s intercourse assigned at beginning. According to the Palm Beach Post’s reporting, FHSAA workers have indicated the brand new kind aligns with the 2021 regulation limiting transgender ladies’ sports activities participation.)
Insisting on the menstruation questions’ inclusion over the objection of fogeys was additionally weirdly out of sync with the state’s Florida’s Parental Rights in Education invoice, typically known as the “Don’t Say Gay” invoice, mentioned Simms-Cendan. “Our governor is incredibly supportive of parental control over student education,” and fogeys also needs to have the suitable to regulate and shield their kids’s well being info, she mentioned.
“I really don’t know what they’re trying to get at by asking this information,” she mentioned in an interview previous to the FHSAA’s determination to vary the shape.
Overall, Simms-Cendan thinks it’s “really positive” that extra individuals are speaking overtly about intervals. But it’s one factor to coach college students about menstrual well being, and one other factor totally to evaluate and analyze somebody’s private menstrual historical past outdoors of a well being care setting.
Young folks want to concentrate on the dangers that may come up once they lose management over that info, she mentioned. “We call our reproductive health system ‘our privates’ for a reason.”
Update, February 10, 5:30 pm ET: This story was initially printed on February 7 and has been up to date to mirror that the Florida High School Athletic Association is dropping the requirement for college kids to share their menstrual histories and has revised the brand new medical eligibility kind to incorporate intercourse assigned at beginning. Also added was details about proposed federal laws to ban related necessities in different public colleges.
