Florida physicians can treat minors for sexually transmitted infections, substance abuse, and mental health problems without first obtaining parental consent.
Those rights, scattered throughout Florida statues, would be eliminated, and the Parents’ Bill of Rights expanded, under HB 173, which cleared the House Health and Human Services Committee Tuesday on a partisan 19-7 vote, with a bloc of Democrats opposing the bill.
HB 173 would strike from the state’s family planning statutes language that allows physicians to provide care to a minor if the physicians determine the minor will “suffer probable health hazards if the services are withheld.”
The bill would alter the state’s sexually transmissable disease statutes to eliminate language that allows the DOH, licensed doctors, hospitals, and clinics to treat minors for infections and diseases. It would continue to allow minors to be examined for STIs without parental consent.
The state’s mental health statutes allow minors 13 and older to receive without parental consent crisis intervention services, including individual psychotherapy, group therapy, counseling, or other forms of verbal therapy from licensed mental health professionals or in a licensed mental health facility.
The bill would eliminate that statute and allow minors only to access “immediate, onsite behavioral health crisis services” from mobile response teams.
Interesting timing
The tandem of proposed changes to family planning services and mental health care were some of those most criticized by members of the public as well as committee members during Tuesday’s hearing on the bill.
The proposed changes come as the rates of STIs in Florida increase and suicide continues to be a leading cause of death for young people.
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.
And although Florida’s suicide rate varies by age and demographics, it’s the second or third largest cause of death for people aged 10-34, DOH data show.
Rep. Shane Abbott, R-Defuniak Springs. (Photo via the Florida House of Representatives) DeFuniak Springs Republican Rep. Shane Abbott, a member of the committee, said that’s precisely why he supports the bill.
“I’ve heard today that we have the highest STI rates in the country doing it the way we’ve been doing it, and now we want to get parents involved. So, maybe as a parent, we can change a behavior. We can prevent a medical outbreak. We can prevent all these health care crises we’re hearing about,” Abbot said.
Rep. Kim Kendall, R-St. Augustine. (Photo/Florida House of Representatives) HB 173 sponsor Rep. Kim Kendall, a Republican from St. Augustine, seconded Abbott’s line of thinking.
“I agree with Rep. Abbott, we’ve been hearing that suicide rates are up, STD cases are up. Let’s give it a shot to put the parents back into the medical welfare of the child,” she said.
What about crisis lines?
Kendall assured committee member Robin Bartleman that she’d “check on the suicide crisis line” and whether HB 173 as written would ban minors from being able to tap into the 988 Suicide & Crisis hotline or Florida 211, a free resource that connects people with services and resources from food and housing to utilities payment assistance and mental health crisis care.
Bartleman, a Democrat from Weston, said she didn’t see any language in HB 173 that ensured minors continued access to the hotlines.
“I can tell you right now, if my teen is about to kill themselves, I want them to access a hotline,” she said, telling Kendall that she flagged the same concerns with a similar bill last year.
Kendall, whose brother committed suicide, defended the changes in the bill.
“You can’t take away the most important thing, which is the vast majority of parents. No medical professional is going to wrap that child in their love and be around 24/7, whether it’s a logical thing like, ‘Oops, don’t take that ibuprofen,’ to, ‘I care about you. You mean something.’ That is critical,” she said.
She added: “I will put my bottom dollar on that, that those numbers (STI infections and suicide rates) go down.”
The bill would require local school boards to provide parents of schoolchildren grades K-12 with a copy — either electronic or paper — of any well-being, mental health, or health screening questionnaire or form to be given to kids. School boards also would be required to provide parents with the dates and times when questionnaires will be administered.
Florida law already requires school boards to provide the parents with the questionnaires and to allow parents to exempt their children. But the law applies only to children in grades K-3. HB 173 would require the notice be given to parents of all students K-12. It also would specifically add “mental health” to the type of questionnaires parents must be informed of in advance.
Erin Grall, R-Fort Pierce. (Photo via the Florida Senate.)
Beefing up the Parents’ Bill of Rights
In addition to striking several statutes from the books, the bill would amend the Parents’ Bill of Rights, to make clear that parents’ rights are limited only if, among other things:
- The parent is the subject of an investigation into a crime against the minor child;
- The minor child is in out-of-home placement by the Department of Children and Families;
- The parent cannot be located and another person authorized to make health care decisions is available to consent; or
- The minor child is receiving emergency medical treatment that if delayed would endanger the health or physical well-being of the minor or is receiving onsite behavioral health crisis care from a mobile response team.
Sen. Erin Grall is sponsoring the companion bill, SB 166, which is identical. It has been referred to the Senate Education Pre-K-12, Health Policy, and Rules committees but has yet to be heard.
More than 30 lobbyist have registered on HB 173 from such disparate interests as the Florida Chapter of American Academy of Pediatrics, local school boards, and the Council of Florida Medical School Deans, a group that represents the state’s public and private allopathic and osteopathic medical schools.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
