Photo by Rae Riiska
Alexandria Gibson, a doula and medspa professional at Little Cottage MedSpa, holds a hand blended herbal remedy for miscarriages, post-abortions and postpartum care Saturday, Nov. 26, 2022.
The Independent Florida Alligator
Photo by Rae Riiska
Alexandria Gibson, a doula and medspa professional at Little Cottage MedSpa, holds a hand blended herbal remedy for miscarriages, post-abortions and postpartum care Saturday, Nov. 26, 2022.
Editor’s Note: This story contains descriptions of domestic abuse and sexual assault.
When Alexandria Gibson was 19 years old, she became pregnant for the first time.
She initially hid it from her mother, knowing she’d be forced to get an abortion. Then, when her firstborn child was 2 years old, she conceived again — Gibson was 22. After having four abortions and one miscarriage to twins by the time she was 25, she would go on to become a doula.
“You have to forgive yourself and know that you made the best decision for yourself as a human being here in this existence," Gibson said.
The overturn of Roe v. Wade doesn’t just make sweeping impacts in the political sphere — it has directly influenced the lives of those seeking abortions. With Florida next in line to make further restrictions on abortion access after a Republican supermajority won in the midterm elections, many are left to wonder what the future may bring in terms of reproductive health.
Gibson’s partners didn’t prioritize her health, she said.
While engaging in sexual intercourse with her partner at the time, Gibson started hemorrhaging, she said. This led her partner to believe she wasn’t really pregnant.
“He told me he would kill me for lying to him for being pregnant," she said. “Because obviously, if I was bleeding, I couldn't be pregnant," she added sarcastically.
After a checkup with a doctor, Gibson learned her partner gave her a sexually transmitted disease that caused the hemorrhaging. He didn’t take the news well.
“He said ‘b—-h, if you keep f—-g with me, I’ll kill your a–s,’" Gibson said.
It took four months in an abusive relationship for her to realize she needed an abortion, she said. As a bartender, Gibson said she relied on her looks for money, and her partner at the time said he wouldn’t support her unless he was sure the baby was his.
She wouldn’t be financially stable if she went through with the pregnancy, so she went through with the abortion despite never considering one before. The procedure cost $1,100 out-of-pocket because she was already 16 weeks pregnant.
“I had that first abortion and wasn't happy about the first one," she said. “But I didn't grieve because I knew that my life was on the line and I had another child I had to take care of."
Gibson was living in Miami Lakes at the time, and the only clinic that would perform abortions that far along was in Homestead, Florida, she said.
Under Florida’s new 15-week abortion ban, Gibson would have been denied this abortion. The only reasons people can get an abortion after 15 weeks is to save the pregnant person’s life, to prevent serious health risks or if the fetus isn’t expected to survive the pregnancy.
“These timelines they have going on are scary because sometimes situations are life or death," she said. “And sometimes it took me five months to have the courage to get out of that situation."
She was involved with another abusive man during her third pregnancy, causing her to keep it a secret for most of the time. She eventually decided to get an abortion procedure when she was 19 weeks pregnant — an illegal procedure under current guidelines — and Gibson said her partner beat her the entire way to and from the abortion clinic.
Florida has reported 61,956 abortions this year so far, of which 672 were performed on Alachua County residents, according to the Agency for Health Care Administration. There have also been 4,780 reported abortions from out-of-state residents in 2022, which nears the 4,873 abortions on out-of-state residents in 2021.
As Southern states continue to ban abortions, the number of non-Florida residents seeking abortions in the state could grow. There was a 3% increase in patients traveling out-of-state to receive abortion care between 2011 and 2020, according to a report by the Guttmacher Institute.
There are 54 licensed OB-GYN physicians in Alachua County, according to the Florida Department of Health. The county only has two abortion clinics — Bread & Roses Women's Health Center and All Women's Health Center of Gainesville — though not all OB-GYNs perform the procedure.
Gibson wanted to expand on women’s health access in the county, and after two more abortions at 24 and 25 years old, as well as a double miscarriage of twins, she started the Goddess Project, a local feminine wellness spa.
A woman’s reproductive system is neglected from an early age, she said. A lack of access to sanitary products, menstrual pain, bloating and sexual assault can all lead to unresolved trauma in a woman’s future, Gibson said.
She’s now a licensed esthetician with 11 years of experience, and she has a bachelor’s degree in alternative medicine. Gibson is also a reiki practitioner and a certified doula, which is a professional labor assistant who will provide physical and emotional support to women during and after birth.
Gibson works with other women to move past those sexual traumas by balancing chakras, doing shadow work, holding classes and workshops and performing yoni steamings, which is a method of cleansing and relieving pain by squatting over steaming herbal waters. In a lot of cases, this kind of trauma prevents women from being sexually liberated, she said.
“We hold space and hold workshops because women need to talk about these things," she said. “They need to know that there are ways to heal and move past and stop those generational consequences."
Gibson’s wellness spa closed its physical location in November, but she hopes this will open up time to work on delivering babies and working with women.
But the reversal of Roe affects more than just women.
Jameson O’Hanlon, a 54-year-old American Express customer care professional and a transgender man, also tackled the unexpected and often disorienting experience of needing an abortion at the age of 17. At that age, he didn’t want a child, and he didn’t connect with the female parts of his body.
“Motherhood was never going to be a real goal for me," he said.
He didn’t waste any time in getting the abortion, he said. He was around eight weeks pregnant when he scheduled his procedure with Gainesville’s Planned Parenthood clinic, which no longer provides abortion services. He never regretted the decision, nor did it haunt him, he said.
A week later, O’Hanlon was walking past the Gainesville Courthouse where he encountered a group of anti-abortion protesters. He confronted them, he said, and they didn’t know how to react.
This all happened in 1985, during O’Hanlon’s first year living on his own. He didn’t have a supportive atmosphere at home, so he decided to take off, he said. Although he knew he was transgender from a young age, he figured he might be gay instead.
As a young queer person, O’Hanlon said he was bullied by both students and teachers. At that age, these experiences are much scarier because children are impressionable and afraid of what others might think, he said. This leads to higher rates of suicide among trans people who don’t receive the support they need, he added.
“I want them to know that there's someone who has lived their experience," O’Hanlon said. “And I came out the other side just fine."
At the time, he didn’t feel comfortable announcing his abortion to the world and was still coming to terms with his gender identity. In 2016, he came out as transgender.
O’Hanlon now fears for the future of transgender teens who might be in similar situations to his when he was a teen, he said.
“Trans people are the punching bag du jour for our current governor," he said.
O’Hanlon views recent legislation that threatens bodily autonomy as justification for unapologetic and aggressive steps, he said. The Democratic Party has been on the defensive for decades, O’Hanson said.
He’s sick of it, he said, and people need to go on the offense instead of trying not to hurt anybody’s feelings.
“This is the way that it works now," O’Hanlon said. “There is no waiting around to see what anybody is going to give us. [They’re] not gonna give us anything. We have to earn everything."
Photo by Rae Riiska
Jane Spear, head of the Gainesville PFLAG chapter, talks about her history as an abortion activist at her home Saturday, Nov 26, 2022.
Today’s fight for reproductive rights is familiar territory for Jane Spear, who watched the fallout of the original Roe ruling in 1973. The 78-year-old Gainesville resident and activist saw firsthand how abortion activists organized for reproductive rights nationwide in one of the first public conflicts on the topic.
A stay-at-home mom to two daughters at the time, Spear grew concerned about the public backlash against Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics amid the Roe debate. She feared the removal of these resources would put her daughters at risk for a botched abortion if they were to become pregnant, she said.
“If they made a mistake, I didn’t think that they should have to pay for that mistake with their lives," Spear said. “I wanted them to have a safe and legal place to go."
Already president of the Springfield, Missouri, chapter of the League of Women Voters, Spear decided to take up abortion activism in addition to her involvement with mobilizing voters. As the “only visible voice for choice" in Springfield, Spear said she felt a responsibility to speak up in the throes of early abortion rallies.
The role spurred her launch into a life of activism. She’s since worked with Planned Parenthood chapters in Missouri and Tampa as a director of public affairs and continued to helm Gainesville’s chapter of PFLAG, a group for allies of LGBTQ people, where she serves as its president.
Spear grew up in a time where women were discouraged from seeking an education or financial independence, and she said she strived for women to experience the same protections and privileges as men. Abortion and bodily autonomy, she said, are some of those privileges.
But it’s not just abortion access Spear is fighting for — it’s choice. Organizations like Planned Parenthood offer life-saving medical treatment and a wide array of resources during pregnancy, which Spear said could disappear if restrictions to clinics and women’s health centers tighten.
“Planned Parenthood is about women’s health care; Planned Parenthood is about education," she said. “I don’t think that people are willing to accept that."
She’s since seen almost 50 years of rights policy come to pass, including Supreme Court decisions that would grant her daughters access to an abortion and her gay son the right to marry.
Now, Spear said those rights are threatened. With Roe overturned and stricter abortion legislation on the horizon, Spear said it’s as if she’s back where she started. Or maybe it’s worse.
“I almost feel as if the work that I’ve done for the last 40 or 45 years has been useless," she said. “It’s more difficult to fight the fight today than it was when I started."
Contact Fernando at ffigeroua@alligator.org and Heather at hbushman@alligator.org. Follow them on Twitter at @fernfigue and @hmb_1013.
Graphic by Minca Davis
Six days.
All it took was six days past Florida’s 15-week abortion ban for board-certified OB-GYN Kristen Witkowski to be forced to send her patient to North Carolina to terminate her pregnancy.
“It was a lot of manpower to figure that out," Witkowski said. “It's not easy to figure out where to send these patients, even for doctors."
What pushed her patient beyond the ban’s threshold was somewhat routine in Witkowski’s profession: genetic testing. After the long process, Witkowski’s patient received the diagnosis that her baby would likely die in two years. However, the lethal anomaly didn’t fit the state’s criteria for receiving an abortion after 15 weeks.
The patient was faced with putting her body through the risk of a full-term pregnancy and introducing her two children to a sibling who's going to die. The family decided to abort the pregnancy.
Witkowski is one of around 2,000 licensed Florida OB-GYNs whose profession has been shaken up in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade’s overturn.
Florida’s House Bill 5 banned abortion after 15 weeks with exceptions for maternal life, severe maternal disability and lethal fetal conditions when it took effect July 1. There are no exceptions for rape, incest or non-lethal fetal conditions.
In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling and the state’s new 15-week ban, many are having to adjust to an influx of out-of-state patients, consider the legal ramifications of their treatments and send patients to other states who can’t be cared for in Florida.
The growing number of obstacles facing OB-GYNs can be mentally exhausting, Witkowski said, especially in a profession that requires a close relationship with the patient.
“If I already wasn't living here, I would not come and work here," she said. “I would stay in a state where I felt like I had all of the options to take care of my patients."
In her 14 years as an OB-GYN, Witkowski has seen a handful of patients whose health deteriorated quickly, she said. She fears this could become the case more often.
“I think about those patients every single day," Witkowski said. “And now, my brain never stops thinking, like shuts off, and stops thinking about the next really sick patient."
Witkowski didn’t always know what area of medicine she wanted to specialize in. OB-GYN was her last rotation in medical school. Her first day in the OB-GYN specialization was a 24-hour shift filled with deliveries, surgeries and even some emergencies, she said.
What drew her to the career was the mixture of primary care, emergency medicine and surgery. She also enjoyed the idea of being able to build relationships with patients that would last their entire lives.
Three years ago, Witkowski joined a small private practice in Tampa. Now, her small office is one of the only ones accepting new patients.
“There's only so many patients we can see," Witkowski said. “Our labor and deliveries are full. I worry about two years from now. We already don't have enough OB-GYNs to take care of the pregnant women we have."
HB 5 and Roe’s overturn have significantly impacted how quickly she counsels patients and the counseling process. She tries to see her patients as soon as they’re pregnant to start genetic counseling and go over what their options are.
When HB 5 was going to the Florida House and Senate, Witkowski did everything she could to contact her local state representatives.
“It's frustrating that nobody asked my opinion," she said. “I wrote letters. I wrote emails. I even drove to their office to talk with their staff. And nobody would talk with me."
She felt sick when she heard Roe had been overturned, Witkowski said.
“It was one of those things that I never felt that that could actually happen, that we could go that backwards," Witkowski said. “The closer it got, the more this feeling grew in the pit of my stomach, and it made me physically sick."
The impacts of changing legislation aren’t specific to smaller private offices — board-certified OB-GYN and maternal-fetal medicine specialist Shelly Tien said her Planned Parenthood clinic in Jacksonville also felt the added pressure. Tien also travels to Arizona to provide part-time care.
Tien wasn’t surprised when she heard Roe had been overturned, she said, because high-risk pregnancies and abortion had been on her mind every moment of the last nearly 15 years.
The loss of the constitutional right to abortion had been something she and her colleagues had feared for some time.
“When the news came, it was very, very devastating," she said. “The impact that we have seen since that time has, unfortunately, kind of confirmed our fears."
Since Roe was overturned, Tien and other health care staff at Planned Parenthood have expanded their services to accommodate the number of patients they’re seeing, including patients who traveled from out of the state.
Forcing people who don’t want to be pregnant and don’t have access to care or have a pre-existing health concern to continue their pregnancy will contribute to an increase in maternal morbidity, maternal mortality, pregnancy complications, hospitalizations and preterm birth, Tien said.
“It's extremely, extremely myopic, dangerous, naive, to just say ‘Have a baby. You don't want the baby, give it up. Everything will be fine,’" Tien said. “No, pregnancy doesn't work like that."
For Tien, the legislative changes completely disrupted a profession she’s felt a calling for all her life.
While rotating through the many subspecialties of medicine, Tien fell in love with obstetrics. She especially loved maternal-fetal medicine, which involves caring for people who have high-risk pregnancies.
Pregnancies can be high risk for many reasons, including pre-existing maternal medical conditions, a patient's personal history or a fetal condition that requires additional care, Tien said.
Healthy people can also develop pregnancy complications as their pregnancies progress. With these complications, the discussion of caring for high-risk pregnancies can include pregnancy termination.
Tien deeply believes women should have the ultimate and only say in what happens to their bodies, she said.
When presented with the opportunity to work for the South, East and North Florida affiliate of Planned Parenthood, Tien accepted it.
“I had an opportunity to kind of restructure my career to make abortion care a larger part of that and also hopefully provide services in parts of the country that are medically underserved," she said.
Prior to Roe being overturned, Tien also had the opportunity to travel and provide abortion services in Oklahoma and Alabama. She hasn’t visited to provide abortion services since earlier this year, with abortion now illegal in these states.
Restricting and making abortion illegal doesn’t make it go away, Tien said. But it does create difficult situations for people seeking an abortion.
These situations can include a woman being pushed further into her pregnancy because she needs to travel or a woman being forced to continue a pregnancy she’s not physically or mentally prepared for, she said.
“Women who are pregnant and don't want to be pregnant, it's cruel to have them be delayed in care, and some of those women will be pushed so far out into their pregnancies that abortion will no longer be an option for them," Tien said.
Some people may also choose abortion because they have a pre-existing health condition that would make their pregnancy high risk.
“These women may need multiple ultrasounds, multiple OB visits every week, every other week, sometimes even twice a week," Tien said. “And thus might need to end up traveling to a major urban center that's 80 miles away from where they live. 300 miles away if they live in a rural area."
The reversal of Roe also thrusted physicians into becoming experts into another field they weren’t too familiar with: law. Even if a patient is really sick, Tien said, she’d need to wait for the person to become even sicker before recommending an abortion to follow the law.
The consequences of misinterpreting the law for physicians can include imprisonment, fines or the loss of their license.
“It has prevented us in many situations from doing what we otherwise would do — being proactive, intervening before women get too sick and die — because of the fear and confusion that our actions might be misinterpreted," Tien said.
Tien participated in a virtual press conference Oct. 12 with Planned Parenthood to share her experiences as an abortion provider.
Laura Goodhue, the vice president of public policy at Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida, and Alexandra Mandado, the president of the organization, also discussed how Roe’s reversal has impacted Planned Parenthood
“The sad fact is that today, it is not safe to be pregnant in this country," Mandado said. Planned Parenthood has seen more than double the number of patients at clinics closest to the Florida-Georgia border including Jacksonville, Gainesville and Tallahassee, Mandado said.
One story Mandado recalled was that of a young girl who traveled a great distance with her family to a Planned Parenthood in northern Florida. When she arrived, she wasn’t wearing shoes due to the economic situation the family was in.
“Abortion providers across the state have always always cared for young people, for sexual violence survivors, for mothers, for people experiencing any number of complex circumstances," Mandado said. “What differs now is that our patients face higher barriers to care created by full, inhumane abortion bans."
Tien believes these barriers will be the most difficult for those living in poverty and those who have already been historically marginalized.
“People who are already living in poverty or near poverty, or in areas of economic instability, of course are more affected because they're going to be less likely to be able to travel somewhere to have an abortion," Tien said.
Patients are more stressed than they ever have been before, said Ina McDonald, the health center manager at the Planned Parenthood Tallahassee Center.
“We now are having to be counselors, providers of basic human needs, like clothing and food, travel agents, helping them get lodging when needed," McDonald said.
This stress is something Witkowski worries will cause people to leave the OB-GYN field. She’s already read that many in her field are retiring or getting out of clinical medicine because it's too much, and she understands the feeling.
“I'm not there yet," Witkowski said. “Hopefully, I will not be there. But it's already an emotionally difficult field, and it's even tougher when you feel like there's so many people working against you."
Contact Melanie Peña at mpena@alligator.org Follow them on Twitter @MelanieBombino_.
Graphic by Namari Lock
Editor’s note: This story includes mentions of sexual assault.
At age 16, Julia Nolff was raped. Even though she didn’t get pregnant, abortion was never on the table.
“It doesn't treat the rape," Nolff said. “It just makes her the mother of a dead child."
Later on, when she attended Missouri State University, Nolff said the anti-abortion club on campus helped her process her trauma.
Nolff, now the 24-year-old marketing manager of a crisis pregnancy center in Winter Park, is one of many online activists to promote anti-abortion ideals within Gen Z. Nearly six in ten people ages 18 to 29 support abortion legality, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.
Nolff also participates in sidewalk counseling, which entails standing outside of abortion clinics and encouraging people walking inside to abandon the procedure.
As a child, Julia Nolff remembers asking her mother to take her to anti-abortion Live Action events so she could watch cartoon abortion procedures.
She learned about abortions in seventh grade, and she began going to Marches for Life and attended anti-abortion conferences right after.
Nolff was involved in the Lutherans For Life group at her church growing up and said the anti-abortion worldview is shaped from a young age in a Christian household.
Life begins at conception, Nolff said, so the issue of abortion centers around human rights.
“In order to be morally consistent," Nolff said, “I had to be anti-abortion."
After doing research on abortion rates in the country, Nolff moved to Florida in 2020 to help reduce Florida’s number — the state has one of the highest rates of abortion in the country. Florida has the fifth-highest rate of abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Some UF students say early exposure to anti-abortion events shaped their involvement with the movement on campus. Anti-abortion sentiment has a place at UF, too, as clubs like Students for Life and UF College Republicans lobby student opinion.
Rylee Ballard, a 19-year-old UF civil engineering sophomore, also began supporting the anti-abortion movement at a young age.
Ballard grew up in Pace, Florida — a town that voted 72% Republican in the last presidential election. Ballard was raised to align with anti-abortion stances, she said.
On a road trip to Orlando when she was in elementary school, she saw a billboard reading “My heart is still beating," and then asked her mother what abortion meant. But the meaning didn’t sink in until middle school, when she felt that being anti-abortion was the only acceptable stance.
She began challenging these beliefs in high school when she shifted to a pro-abortion perspective. In reflection, Ballard said, a large part of her disdain from the anti-abortion movement came from disliking people at her school who were associated with it.
“I don't think that was a smart idea at all," she said.
Ballard did more research. And after encountering differing opinions at UF, she remains unsure of her stance on abortion going forward, she said.
Introduced to the concept in middle school, it took 18-year-old UF political science freshman Gabriel Marrero years to formulate his anti-abortion stance. As a member of UF College Republicans, he said he joined to find common ground with others, including those on abortion.
Marrero describes himself as solidly anti-abortion but said exceptions to the rule are always necessary.
“Just like many other policies, abortion is just another opinion," Marrero said. “You really can’t say that somebody has a right answer, a wrong view or a right view."
Amanda Morningstar, a 23-year-old UF first-year pharmacy student, said she formed her anti-abortion views while growing up in the Catholic Church.
“We believe that each person has a body and soul and those shouldn't be separated by human needs," she said.
Morningstar never received backlash for her views until she started attending UF, she said.
“I definitely received people who didn't agree and came about it kind of in an aggressive way," Morningstar said. “They just kind of heard I was pro-life and then disregarded what I believe."
Morningstar, who is a member of the UF anti-abortion support group Students for Life, has attended the March for Life event in Washington D.C. once in high school and has gone every year for the past two years. Morningstar continues to work with Students for Life by helping them collect items to donate to pregnancy clinics and low-income resources.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned, Morningstar said she was excited.
“You never really feel like you see the results always, but we know that our march and our movement is having an impact," Morningstar said.
To Morningstar, advocating against abortion is integral to her values.
“I just see the pro-life movement as one of love because we tried to uphold each person," Morningstar said. “We're upholding people's lives. And you have to do that in a peaceful way."
Contact Peyton at pharris@alligator.org and Anushka at adakshit@alligator.org. Follow them on Twitter at @peytonlharris and @anushkadak.
Graphic by Namari Lock
In fifth grade, Ellie Mordujovich received her only formal sex education. She remembers being separated from her male peers to learn about female anatomy and the menstrual cycle — although there was no discussion of sex in the one-time class.
“I have no idea what the boys learned," Mordujovich said. “They never really brought up actual sex itself and how to stay protected. I don't remember anything about that."
Now a 17-year-old junior at Buchholz High SchooI, she’s had no further formal lessons on sex education, she said, aside from conversations with her parents. That system of sex education isn’t working, and other grade levels could benefit from understanding sexual development, Mordujovich said.
“I definitely think we should have another course in high school," she said. “In fifth grade, you're not really thinking about that."
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion access, one topic being revisited to prevent unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections across the country is sex education.
More than half of high school students have had sex by the time they graduate high school, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a classroom of 30 Florida high schoolers, statistically eight are routinely sexually active and four have had sex at least once, data from the 2015 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows.
Comprehensive sex education — defined by Guttmacher Institute as material that covers the social, emotional, physical and biological aspects of sexuality and relationships — should begin in elementary school and address a variety of topics across different grade levels, according to the Journal of Adolescent Health.
Florida law doesn’t require schools to teach sex education, but health-related curriculum must address teenage pregnancy. Three bills advocating for required sex education curriculum with LGBTQ-inclusive language failed to pass in the state legislature since 2019.
Yet, Alachua parents and students report a lacking sex education within Alachua County Public Schools. However, after 10 years of a relatively stagnant curriculum, ACPS specialists are revisiting the standards to hopefully revamp them soon, some administrators say.
In Florida, state statutes require public schools to incorporate topics such as nutrition, personal health, prevention and control of disease and substance use into their health education. In grades seven through 12, teen dating violence should be addressed. There’s no direct mention of sex education in the statute’s health section.
However, in grades six through 12, promoting the benefits of sexual abstinence is the expected standard, according to the Florida statutes. For instructional materials used to teach reproductive health, the content must be annually approved in a public meeting of the district’s school board.
ACPS teaches students about puberty, personal health and how to handle issues such as peer pressure and dating violence.
In Alachua County, sex-education-related materials are taught in fifth and seventh grade.
Some students’ recollection of their sex education didn’t come from their time in school — it came from conversations with their parents.
Jada Monroe, a 17-year-old Buchholz High School senior, said her parents used the age-old metaphor of the “birds and the bees" to explain sexual reproduction. These conversations ended once she entered the classroom, she said.
“When you're going to school, your parents, your mom, or whoever your guardian tells you ‘Oh, this is going to happen eventually,’" Monroe said. “But in school specifically, it was just videos. [Schools] did very much the bare minimum."
Other students agree their sex education hasn’t been thorough.
Quin Richmond, a 16-year-old Buchholz High sophomore, said he recalls the educational videos his classmates watched seeming old and outdated. The videos didn’t discuss sexuality or sexual relationships either.
“They can definitely teach more about the protection aspect, and then just basic relationship safety stuff," Richmond said. “That's a lot of what's missing."
Understanding what domestic violence and sexual abuse entails is one matter, Richmond said. But a better understanding of how to be responsible in a relationship can help prevent these issues.
Lisa Sauberan, ACPS’ science curriculum specialist, said the county is updating its human growth and development curriculum with revised language because of new state legislation.
The human growth and development curriculum has always been accessible for ACPS parents to review, Sauberan said, as the district’s website includes a link for resource materials.
Parents can complete an exemption form for reproductive health and disease education lessons.
Updating the current curriculum is a welcome change for some community members who claim ACPS sex education doesn’t go far enough to discuss topics like sexually transmitted diseases and consent.
Jessica Grobman, a 28-year-old UF alumna and Miami-Dade public defender who was born HIV-positive, said she wished STDs were included in high school sex education curriculum.
Being HIV-positive had a limited impact on her childhood, Grobman said, aside from having to take five to seven pills every day. But when she entered high school, Grobman decided students needed to learn about HIV and general sex education.
“Puberty is going to come for everyone," Grobman said. “Every person needs to know about their body and how it works. Keeping out a very large part from our education system is so irresponsible."
Despite some parents believing sex is inappropriate for school-age children, sex education opens up a wider conversation to keep teenagers safe as they start becoming sexually active, Grobman said.
“Litigating and then legislating people's bodies is just another way to have some form of control, but this is actually incredibly detrimental," Grobman said. “It leads to a rise in unplanned pregnancies that leads to a rise in STDs. It doesn't make any sense to me."
Jyoti Parmar, a Gainesville resident whose 15-year-old child attends Eastside High as a sophomore, said the concept of consent isn’t discussed enough in the sex education curriculum.
“We have discussed consent at home," Parmar said. “Every child should know how to say ‘no,' what the boundaries are and what basis human respect demands of them."
The National Library of Medicine’s 2017 study showed more than 93% of parents support having sex education in middle school and high school.
Parental input into curriculum has become heightened within the past year, with one recent law shaking up the landscape on sex education: the Parental Rights in Education Act, known colloquially as the “Don’t Say Gay" bill. The law, which took effect July 1, allows parents to determine what topics related to gender and sexuality their children can be exposed to.
ACPS has taken the law into account, but not much is expected to change, Sauberan said. When revising the curriculum with updated videos or Powerpoint presentations, she said abstinence needs to be addressed as the best way to avoid teen pregnancies.
“We definitely have to be mindful as we go through our materials," Sauberan said. “It's not necessarily going to impact what we teach because what we're teaching is aligned to the required instruction."
The process of updating the curriculum will remain transparent and accessible to parents and community members, Sauberan said.
“We just need to make sure that our human growth and development meets the letter to the laws so that there are no repercussions to a teacher or a district for violating this legislation," Sauberan said.
Outside of schools, some people look to organizations like Planned Parenthood for help teaching sex education.
Kai Christmas, a 26-year-old regional organizer for Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida, said a lot of people have misunderstandings of what sex education is. Part of their goal is to make the topic more accessible and easy to understand.
“It shouldn't ever really be this idea of trying to put a condom on a banana or something like that," Christmas said. “It's talking about our bodies and how we move through life and how we talk with people and have a new perspective."
Public schools can decide against having Planned Parenthood provide sex education-related resources to students, Christmas said, but following the overturn of Roe, addressing sex education is critical.
“It's hard for me since I'm not in the classrooms anymore to know what sort of impacts that it may have," Christmas said. “But what I definitely know is that the state of sex education in Florida is in a bit of a crisis."
Contact Sophia Bailly at sbailly@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter @sophia_bailly.
Graphic by Namari Lock
Florida Republicans painted the post-election landscape red, paving the way for more conservative abortion policies in the upcoming legislative session.
Despite candidate emphasis on reproductive rights, Democrats didn’t pull voters in key Florida races. Now, Florida Democrats are rallying to recover from the loss while state Republicans look to stricter abortion guidelines in the coming months.
Florida voters elected a Republican supermajority in the Florida Legislature, with 85 Republicans outnumbering 35 Democrats in the House and 28 Republicans exceeding 12 Democrats in the Senate. The election marks the 12th year in a row of a Florida Republican trifecta, where the House, Senate and governor’s office are all controlled by the same party.
Abortion in Florida is banned past 15 weeks. But that could change with the new makeup of the state House and Senate.
Danielle Hawk, the former Democratic candidate for Florida’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House, said she anticipates an easier path to passing stricter abortion guidelines like a six-week ban or a total ban.
“I foresee it getting worse and for them to be putting some more extreme restrictions,” Hawk said. “They don’t need to be bipartisan, and they can really just force things through.”
Republican leaders like Gov. Ron DeSantis haven’t explicitly stated plans to tighten existing restrictions, but most ran on platforms of protecting life. Incoming Florida Senate President Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, said she’d support a 12-week limit to abortion, according to a Politico report.
On the national level, Democrats fared better than in Florida. Though Republicans flipped Congress, the predicted red wave didn’t overtake the U.S. with the severity some thought it would.
Republicans hold 220 seats in the U.S. House — just two more than the minimum for a majority — and 49 seats in the Senate. The majority is a far cry from the skew in Florida, presenting a significant challenge to the passage of Republican legislation.
Nationwide outrage following the overturn of Roe v. Wade materialized in the general election, mostly favoring the Democrats. Around 38% of voters reported the overturn had a major impact on whether to vote, and 47% of voters said it influenced the candidates they supported, according to a study from the Associated Press VoteCast.
Voters who cited the court’s decision as the most important factor in the election favored Democrats 2:1, per the study. Among the 47% of voters who said the overturn influenced who they voted for, 64% voted for Democrats in the U.S. House.
The numbers demonstrate a national electorate engaged with the abortion issue, Hawk said. Voters approved abortion protections in California, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont — all the states where reproductive policy was on the ballot.
In Florida, however, it was a different story. Democrats like Hawk, gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist and U.S. Senate candidate Val Demings — who all put abortion access at the top of their political platforms — lost their races to Republican incumbents.
Ben Torpey, a 26-year-old political consultant with Ozean Media, said the Democratic strategy of highlighting social issues like abortion alienated more moderate voters. Inflation and the economy are typically at the tops of voters minds, and Torpey said an emphasis on more abstract points like abortion missed the mark.
“The majority of folks aren’t waking up in the morning and thinking about social justice and equity,” Torpey said.
Alachua voter turnout reached 53%, with 96,000 of 181,000 registered voters casting their ballots Nov. 8, according to the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections Office. Statewide turnout was only 47%, per a preliminary study from UF’s U.S. Elections Project.
The numbers were disappointing to OB-GYNs like Kristen Witkowski, who works at a small practice in Tampa. She fears Floridians missed their chance to safeguard abortion access in this election, and she worries policy as extreme as a total abortion ban are on the horizon with a majority Republican state.
“I hoped more people would be upset, and it would prompt people to go vote for people who will prioritize women’s health care,” Witkowski said. “That’s not what happened.”
Melanie Peña contributed to this report.
Contact Heather at hbushman@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter @hmb_1013.