Florida lawmakers are considering a bill that would outlaw certain conversations about health and wellness for children in fifth grade and below, including discussions about periods. Constituents recently found out just how alarmingly restrictive it could be.
A viral video of Florida state representatives discussing House Bill 1069—which would limit all instruction around sex to grades 6 through 12—was taken last Wednesday and shows Representative Ashley Gantt asking Representative Stan McClain, a proponent of the bill, about what it would mean, realistically, for teachers and students.
“Does the bill prohibit conversations about menstrual cycles? Because we know that typically [menstruation begins] between 10 and 15. So if little girls experience their menstrual cycle in fifth grade or fourth grade, will that prohibit conversations for them, since they are in a grade lower than sixth grade?” Gantt asks. McClain replies, “It would.”
Restricting conversations around menstruation, a normal bodily process, would be incredibly damaging, especially now: Post-Roe, parents, educators, health care workers, and others who work with children and young adults should be overcommunicating about the function of menstruation, Taraneh Shirazian, MD, a board-certified ob-gyn at NYU Langone, tells SELF. “Menstruation is a normal biologic change, and girls and boys should understand it,” she says. “[If you censor conversations around it], you’re going to set up a big problem for young [people] around the issues of pregnancy and family planning.”
As Gantt pointed out, simplifying menstruation to a process that’s supposed to start during or after sixth grade will automatically isolate people for whom it starts earlier. “The nine-year-old [who gets their first period] is going to feel stigmatized and alone going to school,” Dr. Shirazian says. And many people start menstruating before sixth grade (at which point students are usually 11 to 12 years old). According to data from the Centers for Disease and Prevention (CDC), up to 10% of girls in the US begin to get their periods by age 10.
Regardless of age, implementing this law would send the message that girls’ bodies are unspeakable—which will likely have long-term consequences, Jennifer Lincoln, MD, a board-certified ob-gyn and executive director of Mayday Health, a health education nonprofit, tells SELF. “Banning educators from discussing normal and physiological processes like menstruation enrages me as an ob-gyn. We are basically telling menstruators that we can’t talk about what’s happening to their bodies, which implies that it is shameful, dirty, and unnatural,” Dr. Lincoln says. “This sets the stage for a lot of misunderstanding and psychological trauma that will need to be undone. How these legislators sleep at night is incomprehensible to me.”
House Bill 1069 would indirectly teach school-age girls that their bodies are somehow controversial when compared with boys’ bodies, Dr. Shirazian explains: “Once you start to set up that dichotomy, we can’t empower girls.” In some parts of the world, this stigmatization comes at a huge cost, she adds: “Globally, some girls are not going to school” because of societal shame attached to starting their periods.
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Restricting conversations about menstruation isn’t the only thing House Bill 1069 would accomplish: If passed, it would curtail public schools’ ability to offer information on sexually transmitted diseases and human sexuality; allow parents to deny their children access to resources that could teach them about sexual identity; and require schools to tell children that their sexual identity is determined at birth, per the Associated Press.
Ultimately, the bill, which cleared the House Education Quality Subcommittee last week by a 13-5 vote, would chip away children’s rights to education and expression in a state that’s been ramping up gender-focused attacks. (Last month, the Florida High School Athletic Association tried to mandate that high school athletes report their menstrual cycles in an attempt to discriminate against transgender teenagers, as NPR reported.) In doing so, the state’s conservative lawmakers are politicizing people’s well-being—which will come with dangerous consequences. “We need more education and empowerment around [these topics],” Dr. Shirazian says. “That should not be seen as controversial.”
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