The Floridian Anti-Abortion Backdoor
Florida’s “Girls Must Report Menstruation” Regulations Are (Were?) A Poorly-Disguised Back Door Into Gathering Data For Anti-Abortion Purposes.
Hello, friends,
In our previous post, we talked about the value of silence when it isn’t one’s time to speak. We also talked about how individual tragedies can, with some impact lost, be collectivized into larger social issues that can in turn be targeted for transformation by sufficiently-sized political movements.
Last week’s article earned over 110 views, more than double our previous “high,” to which I can only thank you profusely - and welcome you to comment if you read this and got something out of it. I like feedback!
This week, I’m going to talk about something that many might find self-evident and obvious (especially if, y’know, you read the title), but something that will require collective action to have any hope of reversing in our lifetimes.
Today, we’re talking about how Florida’s apparently-just-failed Transphobic effort to require young girls & people who can become pregnant to report their menstruation, and how it ties into the persecution of those who can become pregnant when it comes to the right to make their own medical decisions, such as abortion.
First, The Premise
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, dear reader, just how prevalent Transphobia is, today. Sporting is one of the most hotly-contested conflict zones for this issue. Specifically, and I hate to have to breathe any shred of sustainability into this bad-faith argument, they feed off of the fear that “Men” will play Women’s sports under the false guise of being Trans. Matt Friedman at Politico has chronicled numerous GOP-led attempts to require genital inspections and other tests for children in order to play sports. These are extremist bills that would violate children’s bodily autonomy at the whims of any who think they weren’t “born with” the “correct” gender.
The Florida regulation I mentioned earlier in this article, which was to be issued by the Florida High School Athletic Association, is one such bill. The premise is that that if girls aren’t menstruating at an appropriate age, well, they “might not be girls.” The idea is that someone will gather up data about when they menstruate and that way they’ll be sure no “boys” are playing
Now, word reached me a few paragraphs deep into the article that this regulation was defeated. Specifically, at least according to the aforementioned article by Carlos Suarez of CNN Health, questions about menstruation are now “optional.” This means they’re still asked, but athletes don’t have to answer them in order to play in 2023-2024.
But what’s horrifying is, as the article mentions, is the real purpose behind this effort.
\Time To Delete Your Period Tracking Apps?
I’ll just provide a little cut-and-paste job from Suarez’ article for those who may have missed the previous link.
Let’s dissect.
The AAP suggests that menstruation data should be collected, but not shared with schools or organizations. They profess this is for the reason of evaluating a student’s health. I remember having to see a doctor as part of the process of qualifying to be on a sports team; you have to be in good enough health to do it! Yet, the cited information specifically calls out pregnancy as a consideration.
Golly gee. I doubt you’d be surprised to learn that Florida wanted to collect data about menstruation in order to monitor whether or not a person has become pregnant. You also won’t be surprised to hear the organization Abortion Finder reports that Florida has a draconian law restricting abortion to about 15 weeks.
The math is simple: Florida wanted an easy-in to figure out if girls are getting pregnant, and to prevent them from having abortions and/or to build evidence that they might be concealing an abortion that took place after the fifteen-week deadline. Essentially, they wanted period-tracking data from children.
I know this is a bit of a side-step, but I want to bring up an article by the Electronic Freedom Foundation’s Gennie Gebhart and Daly Barnett about the possible need to delete period tracking apps. Their conclusion is that you don’t necessarily have to do it. They argue, with good reason, that data-searching is not the likeliest scenario for someone’s medical decisions to be exposed. With that said, and considering they suggest that any electronic conversations about potential pregnancies be done with end-to-end encryption, their conclusion is not particularly reassuring. It’s still a great read, I’m just a little paranoid that the status will remain quo.
I will also add, on a personal level, that my wife deleted her period tracker when Roe was slaughtered.
How Can We Improve On Things?
I like to end my articles by explaining what we can do to make things better.
Well, unfortunately, the opportunity for improvement has somewhat passed. Ideally, “Democratic” Senator Joe Manchin and “At-The-Time-Democratic” Senator Krysten Sinema should have allowed a clean, non-filibustered vote on establishing Roe as the law of the United States in the previous Congress. Since they chose to enable Fascist overreach, Democrats have lost control of the House of Representatives. It’s impossible to imagine Speaker McCarthy allowing any kind of vote on codifying Roe, now. Even if he did allow a vote, it’s hard to imagine enough Republicans would vote with Democrats in favor of it.
I will also note that the best opportunity to stop this from happening really took place in 2016, when Hillary Clinton ran for President, but I digress.
At this point, it seems like all the ‘quick fixes’ are out of the window: There’s no chance of expanding the Supreme Court (Why are there 9 Justices for 13 Circuits, anyway?). There’s no chance of Impeaching, say, *all* of Trump’s appointees for lying under oath when asked about Roe. Biden could (and, to his credit, has) issue executive orders, but they might well be fought and defeated in courts stacked with Republican appointees.
Ultimately, we just have to make sure Democrats win everything in 2024. For the Legislative branch? How we’ll do that without getting rid of Gerrymandering, and with the risk of “spoiler” candidates like Krysten Sinema running third-party to siphon Democrat votes in a shameful system that lacks Ranked Choice Voting, is utterly beyond me. This time, according to Aaron Blake and Nick Mourtoupalas of The Washington Post, the Senate map won’t be so friendly for Democrats.
On the Executive side: This time, instead of necessarily running head-to-head against Donald Trump’s immediate failures, the onus will (presumably?) be on Joe Biden to prove he deserves a second term against whoever ends up winning the Republican Nomination. Someone without Trump’s tainted past might squeak out a victory, especially since the Electoral College exists to grant the minority greater power.
I’m not pointing out the tremendous mountain in order to claim we have no chance. Rather, we need to treat the situation like what it is: An uncertain situation in which Democracy might die if we don’t act. For voters, that means voting like it’s the last election we’ll have. For politicians, it means leading in such a way as to motivate more voters to turn out. As Brad Dress of The Hill alludes to, “Democracy might die” isn’t necessarily the call to arms that some people think it is.
We need real substance and real distinctions from the Republicans to beat them. Republican-Lite will simply not win crossover votes. There are many ways to do that, and if you need a starter one that a lot of people will get behind, here’s an article on Medicare For All that might interest you.
Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe. If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list. This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.