Florida's War on Freedom: The Calculated Hypocrisy of 'Parental Rights'

Sep 7
3 min read

Cassandra Williamson

Hardy, Pike County, Kentucky

"Shouting from the hollers to the skyscrapers"

7 September 2025

Coming to a state near you,... Florida's hypocrisy, a national disgrace.

In Florida, the words “freedom” and “parental rights” are brandished like sacred texts. They are the justification for a radical health policy agenda, promising to liberate families from government overreach. But this is a lie. A closer look at the state’s actions reveals that these principles are not principles at all—they are political weapons, selectively deployed to enforce a rigid ideology while trampling on the very freedoms they claim to protect.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking, laid bare across three critical battlegrounds: vaccines, gender-affirming care, and abortion. Together, they paint a damning picture of a government obsessed not with liberty, but with control.

The Convenient Case for 'Autonomy': Vaccines

Let’s start where the state’s rhetoric is loudest. When it comes to vaccines, Florida’s leadership suddenly transforms into staunch libertarians. Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo declares that the government "should not be there," positioning the state as a righteous defender of the sacred relationship between parent, child, and doctor. Parents are trusted to reject decades of settled science on communicable diseases, even if it means reintroducing measles or polio into our communities.

In this arena, parental choice is absolute. The government, we are told, has no business interfering. It’s a powerful message of autonomy. It’s also a convenient fiction.

The State as Doctor: The Ban on Gender-Affirming Care

That fiction shatters the moment a family, in consultation with their doctors, decides to seek gender-affirming care for their child. Suddenly, the sanctimonious defense of the parent-doctor relationship evaporates. The same government that claimed it "shouldn't be there" now barges into the examination room with the force of law.

With the passage of SB 254, Florida has unilaterally vetoed the decisions of loving parents and trusted medical professionals. It has criminalized doctors for providing care that every major medical association in the country recognizes as medically necessary and life-saving. The message is no longer about freedom; it’s about compliance. Parents who support their transgender children are deemed unfit to make decisions. The state, in its infinite wisdom, will make those decisions for them, substituting political dogma for medical expertise and parental love. Here, "parental rights" are not just ignored; they are annihilated.

The Ultimate Betrayal: The War on Bodily Autonomy

Nowhere is this hypocrisy more egregious than in the state’s draconian assault on reproductive freedom. While claiming to get government out of healthcare, Florida has enacted one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country, effectively obliterating a woman’s control over her own body.

The six-week ban is a near-total ban, outlawing abortion before many women even know they are pregnant. It makes no meaningful exceptions for the horrific realities of rape or incest. It forces a woman to carry a pregnancy against her will, subjugating her health, her future, and her fundamental autonomy to the will of the state.

Where is the principle of "getting government out of healthcare" now? It has vanished. The woman and her doctor are no longer trusted. Her life-altering decisions are no longer her own. The state has made itself the sole arbiter of her body.

A Fraudulent Ideology

Let’s call this what it is: a fraudulent ideology. In the state of Florida, you have the "freedom" to ignore public health science. But you have no freedom to affirm your child’s identity. A woman has no freedom to control her own reproductive destiny.

"Parental rights" is a slogan, not a belief. "Autonomy" is a privilege granted only when your choices align with the state’s political agenda. This isn’t about protecting children or empowering families. It is about power. It is about controlling who gets to be free, which parents are deemed worthy of rights, and whose body is considered their own. It is a calculated hypocrisy, and Floridians are paying the price.