Half of the population experiences a period each month and needs the proper products to remain hygienic and comfortable. Despite this, menstrual products are not accessible or free for the many women who need them each month.

Women start their periods at around 12 years old. Every month after this, they need to use specialized products to keep themselves clean, comfortable, and safe from embarrassment. These products come in a variety of forms, including pads, tampons, or even period underwear and menstrual cups. These products range in price and reusability, but they all help women stay clean during their periods.

These products are expensive, and getting more and more expensive with inflation and tariffs. With already extremely tight budgets, the added cost of pads or tampons might be what puts someone right over the edge.

Toilet paper is provided for free in any bathroom you come across, but you almost always have to pay for menstrual products, if they even have a machine. This makes it difficult for anyone in a tough situation to access the products, especially people who may be homeless, or those where public bathrooms are the only option for personal hygiene. If toilet paper is a basic necessity, why aren’t menstrual products?

Some might argue, why not use a reusable product if the expense of disposable products is too much? While this is a valuable argument, and it is important to encourage the use of reusable products to not only help the environment, but also our banks as well, reusable products can be even more expensive and require an extensive process to clean. Menstrual cups are a great option that works for a lot of people, but if you don’t have access to the proper utilities to clean the products, it can lead to infections or other health issues. If menstrual products are supposed to help with personal hygiene, reusing dirty products produces the exact opposite effect.

So, how can a representative like you help? You could start by encouraging the use of reusable products to those who can afford them and properly clean them. Other measures can be taken, like ensuring machines in public bathrooms are properly stocked, and at least more affordable, or, ideally, free.

It’s easy to overlook issues like access to menstrual products because it is a quiet struggle that women go through, and is something that might seem hopeless to make better. But it can be better. Women’s health is human health, and it is vital for everyone to have proper access to the resources they need. Please, do whatever you can to make the lives of half of the human population comfortable and clean.