When you read the word “country club” what do you think of? Surely, images of golf clubs, picturesque green lawns, wait staff, and buttoned up shirts swirl through your mind. Do you think of tampons? According to Republican representative Richard Prickett from Maine, offering free tampons and pads to women’s correctional facilities would make jails like country clubs. This notion, that access to feminine hygiene products is luxurious, has caused health crises for menstruators across the globe, especially incarcerated women. This is unacceptable. Just as the federal government must ensure incarcerated women have food and water, they must ensure women have access to pads and tampons as well.
Numerous studies from across the globe have proven unsafe and unhygienic menstrual hygiene practices pose dangerous health risks including reproductive tract infections, infertility, and even death. Coupled with the fact that the United States has one of the highest rates of female incarceration in the world, it is an urgent concern that women within the carceral system are guaranteed menstrual equity.
While the push towards menstrual equity has gained legitimate traction over the past few years, state legislators have done little to address reproductive health care in the prison system. Because of this, women in prison are often given an insufficient supply of safe and usable menstrual products. One story particularly highlights this failure to protect women’s health. In 2015, Kimberly Haven had to get an emergency hysterectomy after she was released from a Maryland prison. While incarcerated, Haven was denied access to the pads and tampons she needed. In an effort to survive, Haven made her own out of toilet paper, and her makeshift menstrual hygiene products caused her to contract toxic shock syndrome, ultimately requiring the hysterectomy that saved her life. This is an especially egregious case, but it highlights the underlying issue that women in the carceral setting are being denied access to supplies that are essential to their physical health.
Women across the United States report that while incarcerated, they only receive an allotted number of pads or tampons regardless if that allotment sufficiently meets their needs. A report on Menstrual equity by the ACLU shared many shocking and disturbing violations of menstrual equity for U.S. women in the carceral setting. The report cites “in one Michigan jail, women detainees were regularly denied access to desperately needed menstrual products.Some women there only received such products after begging for them, while others never received them at all. They were therefore forced to use toilet paper to manage menstrual bleeding or else bleed into their prison jumpsuits. Because laundry day occurred once a week, they were forced to rewear bloody clothes for up to a full week.” In the same prison, the staff forced 30 women to compete with one another to share a pack of 12 pads. In another violating example in Indiana, “ a woman was provided no products for 36 hours and then was provided only four — three pads and one tampon — for the next two and a half days. She bled through her jumpsuit onto the floor where she was forced to sleep. She was humiliated and subjected to a severely unhygienic environment.”
These women were within the care of the state, and general conditions of prisons aside, the 8th amendment guarantees protections from cruel and unusual punishments. Included in this protection, is the requirement that people in prison are afforded the minimum standard of living. For people who menstruate, having access to menstrual products is the minimum standard of living.
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