Questions about female athletes’ menstrual history will no longer appear on medical forms that Florida high school students must fill out before participating in sports.
The Florida High School Athletic Association addressed the question Thursday after hearing a flood of complaints contained in a letter read aloud during an emergency board meeting.
Answering the question was previously optional, but the association’s advisory committee recently recommended making it mandatory, prompting criticism.
Some called the question “humiliating” and “invasive,” and others suggested it was tied to a new bill that would ban transgender girls and women from playing on public school teams meant for student-athletes who identified as girls at birth. .
“This is another way to shame girls,” Connie DeWitt said in a letter.
Dr. Deborah White writes that there is “zero” reason for schools to know about a student’s menstrual history.
“One reason is to eliminate transgender children who are not menstruating,” White said. “As a doctor, I will not fill out this form.”
Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law in 2021, thrusting the state into a national cultural debate about transgender rights. DeSantis is believed to be considering a run for president next year on a deeply conservative platform.
A spokesperson for the association said the proposed changes were not in response to concerns about transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, as some social media users have claimed. And the president of the association John Gerdes insisted that politics was not in the discussion, although the newly adopted form calls for “the type assigned at birth.”
“This governor and his office have nothing to do with this,” Gerdes said Thursday.
Many other countries ask or require female athletes to include details about their menstrual cycle with other health information.
The four-page form adopted by the board will still contain questions about mental health, alcohol and drug use and family health history, but the answers will remain in the office of the health practitioner who conducts the student’s medical examination. The school will only get a page stating the student’s medical eligibility.
The association’s medical advisory committee, which recommended to the council to make the menstrual history in the mandatory form, said that it follows the national guidelines for sports physicals developed by the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Sports Medicine and other groups.
The guidelines state that menstrual history is an “important discussion for female athletes” because period abnormalities can be a sign of “low energy availability, pregnancy, or other gynecological or medical conditions.”
However, the chair-elect of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Sports Medicine & Fitness told The Associated Press on Thursday that Florida’s previous proposal was inconsistent with those guidelines because the academy only recommended that medical eligibility forms be sent to schools, not personal medical information.
“And we recognize the problem,” said Rebecca Carl, a professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University. “It’s not designed to be shared with schools.”
The two council members who voted against removing the question said there was no reason menstrual information could not be included on the form and kept in the medical practitioner’s office.
Sports eligibility evaluations are the only chance some students have to meet with a health care provider, and having questions on the form can help detect medical problems, board member Chris Patricca said.
“Student-athletes are safer and better protected by including these questions,” he said.
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