‘When was your last period?” None of your business, Florida sports board learns | Opinion

Menstruation has been stigmatized, made out to be gross and kept secret, lest women disturb those shocked by bodily functions. Of course, this is no longer the Victorian era — or even the 1950s — and changing times in American society have helped make menstruation more of a fact of life, which it is.

But that doesn’t mean young women want to go public when they are having their periods. Or let their schools store information on their last menstruation or “how many periods” they have had “in the past 12 months.”

It took an outcry from girls and parents to force the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) to see that. The organization, which oversees high school sports in the state, had considered requiring female athletes to provide detailed information about their menstruation, which would then be turned over to schools.

On Thursday, the FHSAA nixed that idea. Good.

Questions about an athlete’s period aren’t new. They have appeared on the state’s athletics participation form for two decades — along with a myriad of other health-related questions. But responding currently is optional.

Invasion of privacy

After the Palm Beach Post reported parents’ privacy concerns when the forms moved online, the FHSAA appeared ready to double down. Its sports medicine committee recommended that the questions become mandatory and an athlete’s medical history be turned over to schools.

There are many reasons why tracking a young woman’s period can help doctors evaluate her health. Missed or irregular periods can indicate not only pregnancy but serious health disorders.

But there’s a level of tone deafness in requiring a young person to give up her medical privacy as a condition to play a sport, especially when that information is about her reproductive health. A little prudence would have prompted committee members to consider how the dismantling of abortion rights by the U.S. Supreme Court and Florida put many people on alert about how their reproductive information could be used. There’s fear that prosecutors could use medical records against women who terminate pregnancies. Maybe those fears are exaggerated, but even if they are, the potential for open access to the information is a non-starter.

Doctors only

As relevant as menstruation history is, doctors recently interviewed by the Herald raised concerns about privacy and how schools would store such sensitive information. The Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics says it should only be reviewed by doctors, not school officials and coaches.

The FHSAA board of directors voted Thursday, in an emergency meeting, to require students submit just one page, signed by a doctor, to schools stating whether they are healthy to compete.

Why weren’t FHSAA officials smart enough to start there and avoid inflaming a controversy that was already brewing after the Post’s reporting?

This story was originally published February 10, 2023 at 1:59 PM.