Amid rise of STI rates among teens, a bill could risk their access to treatment and birth control

Yahoo

26-03-2025

High school and college students with the Planned Parenthood lights and generation action programs testified against a bill in the Senate on March 25, 2025, that would require parental consent to access birth control and treatment for sexually transmitted infections. (Photo by Jackie Llanos/Florida Phoenix)
Florida teens are contracting sexually transmitted infections at rates higher than in the past decade, and a bill advancing in the Republican-controlled Legislature would require them to tell their parents to secure treatment.
Minors in Florida are entitled to privacy with doctors and medical providers to receive treatment for STIs, substance abuse, and mental health problems. In some cases, doctors can prescribe birth control to minors without their parents' written consent.
Vero Beach Republican Sen. Erin Grall wants to eliminate those exceptions and grant parents access to all their kids' medical records, including approving any health surveys or questionnaires they may fill out. This means that healthcare providers wouldn't be able to treat a minor with an STI without a parent's permission.
The staunch anti-abortion senator is labeling the statutory exceptions providing teens privacy with their doctors a parental rights problem in SB 1288.
'It's tragic to me that so many people have had to experience such pain at the hands of their parents, but I believe that as a society, we have marginalized parents in a way that has led to that behavior, and it's my hope that we see that change,' Grall said during the Senate Pre-K-12 Committee meeting, which the bill passed with four senators in opposition, including a Republican.
Grall said she found bothersome her own experience taking her daughter to the doctors' office, where the child was given a survey about suicide. She told lawmakers that repeatedly asking children if they had ever considered suicide could cause them to start thinking about it.
During nearly an hour of testimony, sexual assault survivors and reproductive health advocates say the bill was dangerous for kids who can't confide in their parents at risk, leading to an increase in teen pregnancies and STIs.
Statewide rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis among 13 to 17-year-olds are the highest they have been since 2008, according to 2023 data from the Florida Department of Health. Those infections can be cured with antibiotics, but worsen if left untreated for longer.
'This is war on our reproductive freedoms, but what I was really shocked to hear is that we are now attacking the mental health of our children,' said Sarah Parker, a member of the public providing testimony who said she had been sexually assaulted as a child. 'We know that children are abused and raped in the system. Let's not pretend these things are not happening. Just say you don't care and be transparent.'
Florida statute is clearer about teens' ability to receive treatment for STIs, substance abuse, and mental health services without parental consent than it is about granting access to birth control. However, physicians can prescribe birth control to a minor if their medical opinion is that the patient would suffer health hazards otherwise.
Nearly all of Grall's Republican colleagues agreed, but Miami Republican Sen. Alexis Calatayud opposed the bill, insisting that the requirement become parental notification and not consent. Grall said she wasn't willing to make that change.
'We have to consider how we protect vulnerable populations, and we cannot hope the best for them with the policy without creating some sort of protections for them,' Calatayud said.
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The state has been making strides toward reducing the number of teen pregnancies. Between 2004 and 2023, the rate of teen pregnancies among minors fell from 13.8 to 3.6 per 1,000 women in the state, according to FDH data.
Those numbers don't capture how Florida's reproductive care landscape has changed since the six-week abortion ban went into effect in May, but doctors already had to get parental consent or permission from a judge to provide abortions to minors.
Grall, who sponsored the law restricting abortions in most cases after six weeks' gestation, said she wasn't concerned about an increase in teen pregnancies and that minors could still report abuse to law enforcement or other mandated reporters.
With a shorter timeframe for minors to secure an abortion before six weeks' gestation, pro-abortion advocates say access to birth control is essential.
'This bill helps no one and causes undue harm to young Floridians, who, under the current abortion ban, would be forced to carry out unwanted teen pregnancies due to lack of access to education, birth control, and testing,' said Tsi Day Smyth, chief deputy director of Voices of Florida. 'I was here when y'all decided that parents do not have the authority to make these sorts of decisions when it comes to their kids' gender-affirming care, and now you're saying that they do have the authority to make these decisions when it comes to reproductive care. Pick a lane, please.'
The lack of sex education in public schools across the state also worsens the potential damage of the bill if kids don't know how they can contract STIs, critics of the proposal said.
'At the end of the day, failing to educate young people, hampering our ability to conduct risk assessment surveys, and restricting access to family planning is a recipe for disaster for young people in Florida,' said Michelle Grimsley Shindano, director of Public Policy for the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, in a press release.
Health care providers could face disciplinary actions if they disobey parental consent requirements, such as probation and suspension or revocation of their licenses, according to a legislative analysis of the bill. They could also have to pay fines of up to $10,000 per violation.
January Littlejohn, the Leon County mother whom First Lady Melania Trump invited to President Donald Trump's speech to a joint session of Congress, was one of five people speaking in support of the bill. The parental rights advocate recently lost her appeal in the dismissal of her suit against the county's school board and superintendent over a dispute relating to her child wanting to use pronouns and express a gender identity she didn't approve of, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.
'Bottom line is, we cannot continue to presume all parents to be a risk of abuse with no due process, and continue to cut them out of medical and mental health care decisions for their children, because it is us, the parents, that know and love our children better than anyone else,' she said.
SB 1288 is not the only bill Grall filed angering pro-abortion advocates this legislative session. The Republican senator also wants parents to claim damages in the wrongful death of a fetus at any stage of development, which critics say would establish fetal personhood.
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