spongebobsquarepants:

Reblog if you need this energy

(via teenagerposts)

12 Pads a Month, If You’re Lucky

sheflowstoo:

I do not want to imagine what it would feel like to wake up on the morning of my period and not have the adequate menstrual products that I need. I do not want to imagine not being able to go to the store and supply myself with the products I need for my health. I do not want to imagine what it would be like to have the things I need to nurture my body, be used as bargaining chips of my worth. 

But many women don’t have the option to imagine this scenario because they are living it every month. 

Many women in female prisons do not have access to the adequate feminine hygiene products that they need. Do to caps on the amount of products an inmate may obtain at a particular time, corrupt prices on products in the prison commissary, and the overall shortage of products circulating female prisons, many women are left feeling dehumanized and humiliated by the lack of control they have over their period. 

Many legislators claim that providing a maximum of 12 sanitary pads through commissary per month is an adequate amount. But, many of the inmates wither make too low of an income (many in-prison jobs pay as low as .15 cents and hour). This wage is too low to buy more than about 6 sanitary pads per month. 

This shortage of sanitary pads can lead many women into making their own versions of sanitary pads buy using toilet paper. This can cause serious health problems and complications. 

One former inmate, Kimberley Haven, said that after being released from the only all female prison in Maryland, she suffered severe toxic shock syndrome from her make-shift sanitary pad. She needed an emergency hysterectomy. 

“Toxic shock, emergency hysterectomies — it runs the gamut of how women are forced to pay for, with their very health, our bad policies and our inattention to the gender disparities that exist within our system,” Haven said.

Another advocate, Amy Fettig, deputy director for the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, says that “Even though women have been the largest increasing portion of the criminal justice system for two decades, they still are a relatively small portion compared to men, and so their needs and situations have been largely ignored, both in our criminal justice system and by the public at large, and that’s finally beginning to change because of the work of advocacy groups,“ Ms. Fettig said. “I think it’s also because of the larger #MeToo movement and awareness about women’s status in this country and how far we still have to go, as well as popular culture.”

Although this issue is fairly new, it is important to recognize how the lack of female menstrual products in prison is a breach of basic human health. The health of the women in prisons is being jeopardized in order to place oppression on the women incarcerated. A woman is a woman, and all women deserve the menstrual products that they need for their period. Because at the end of the day, she flows, too.