Florida Is Telling Schools Not to Teach Students About Birth Control

The Florida Department of Education recently told multiple school districts in the state to roll back their sex education lessons because, it claims, instruction on reproductive anatomy, contraception, and consent is inappropriate for adolescents and teens. The news was first reported by the Orlando Sentinel.

State law doesn’t require instruction on sexual education, but if schools choose to teach it, they must emphasize the “benefits of sexual abstinence as the expected standard and the consequences of teenage pregnancy” in grades six through 12. Districts have to submit their proposed lesson plans for review or use state-approved textbooks, and officials from the DOE recently told about a dozen districts across the state that their plans did not meet state standards—an entire year after the districts submitted their plans.

State officials called educators at Broward County Public Schools, the nation’s sixth largest school district, on August 21 to talk about their lesson plans. According to notes from the call provided to the Orlando Sentinel, the state had very specific comments about showing photos. “Pictures of external sexual/reproductive anatomy should not be included in any grade level,” the notes said, summarizing what officials said on the call. “Contraceptives are not part of any health or science standard” but could be mentioned as a “health resource,” though “pictures, activities, or demonstrations that illustrate their use should not be included in instruction in any grade level,” according to the notes. Broward County Public Schools has until early October to tell the state how it plans to comply.

Lesson plans for Orange County Public Schools did emphasize abstinence, but they also addressed how pregnancy happens, how birth control works, what consent means, and how to handle pressure to have sex. The district scrapped its own plans and will use the state-approved textbook. Orange County School Board member Karen Castor Dentel said the changes would result in teens getting information from the internet or from friends, which may not be reliable. “I think it’s utterly ridiculous and is a continuation with the state’s obsession with sex and denying our students fact-based information about their bodies, how they work,” Dentel said. “I think it’s a disservice to this generation, but it’s consistent with what is coming out of Tallahassee [the state capital] these days.”

Abortion is currently banned in Florida after six weeks of pregnancy.

Elissa Barr, a professor of public health at the University of North Florida and part of the Florida Healthy Youth Alliance, told the Orlando Sentinel that, as districts contact her about the state outreach, she’s been keeping a list of words they say they’ve been told to remove from lesson plans. The words and topics include abuse, consent, domestic violence, fluids, gender identity, and LGBTQ information.

A spokesperson for the DOE defended the changes to the Associated Press by falsely characterizing sex ed as encouraging young people to have sex. “Florida law requires schools to emphasize the benefits of sexual abstinence as the expected standard and the consequences of teenage pregnancy,” the department’s communications director, Sydney Booker, said. “A state government should not be emphasizing or encouraging sexual activity among children or minors and is therefore right to emphasize abstinence.”

Barr told the AP that this crackdown will harm kids. “Sex ed is sexual abuse prevention. It’s dating violence prevention. And it just helps young people develop healthier relationships and actually delay sexual initiation,” she said. “We still have one in four teens pregnant at least once before age 20. So for us to cut contraceptive information and education is really doing young people a disservice. It’s very harmful.”