Let’s take a moment to talk about *why* this is even still an issue. Men in power are deciding what’s necessary for women’s health, from menstrual products to birth control and abortion access. How about instead of regulating our wombs, they start funding the things we need? Basic necessities like menstrual products should be free, or at the very least, untaxed! Some states are catching on—New York and California have removed the tampon tax and now offer free products in schools and public facilities. Minnesota has joined the effort, with Governor Tim Walz signing a bill to provide free menstrual products in schools, despite backlash. The fact that we even need to push for this shows just how out of touch lawmakers can be. Meanwhile, in Texas, we can’t even get lawmakers to protect basic reproductive rights, but they have all the energy to pass restrictive abortion bans and take birth control off the table .
And speaking of taking things off the table—how is it that with all of this control over women’s health, no one told us we didn’t even need to menstruate at all? Science shows that women don’t *need* to have periods if they’re not planning to get pregnant, and yet, here we are, still fighting for the right to control what happens with our bodies. Imagine if teenagers were given the option to pause their periods and harvest their eggs, preventing all the unnecessary suffering. We could stop the cycle—pun intended—and invest that time and money elsewhere. Instead, lawmakers are focused on controlling women, rather than giving us options.
And let’s not even get started on the control men have over women’s bodies. The idea of bodily autonomy is under attack, and it's happening everywhere. I mean, it’s like a never-ending game of who gets to make the rules about what we do with our health. Just last year, Texas passed Senate Bill 8, which bans most abortions after about six weeks, before many women even know they're pregnant! Meanwhile, in California, they’re finally getting it right by offering free menstrual products in schools and public facilities. It’s about time, right? But progress is slow, and we’re still dealing with places that try to defund Planned Parenthood while pushing policies to limit abortion access. It’s wild how many hoops we have to jump through just to maintain our bodily autonomy .
And what about those kids these lawmakers claim to care so much about? Nearly 24,000 teens aged 15 and up are stuck in the foster care system, many of whom may never be adopted. Yet the same politicians who want to force women into motherhood are doing very little to address the crises these kids face. These teens are fighting for stability while we’re out here fighting for control over our own reproductive rights .
Now, I’ve made my peace with the fact that I didn’t opt out of menstruation sooner, but here’s the kicker: the one thing I could always count on was my period. While lawmakers and men were busy telling me what I couldn’t do, my body reminded me every month that, like clockwork, I had this little sliver of consistency. It’s funny in a twisted way, that the thing society loves to ignore or overregulate was the one thing I could always count on. So, while the world tries to control women's health, I find a certain ironic comfort in the fact that, through all of it, my menstrual cycle has always had my back.
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Sources:
9. Why Republicans are Calling Walz "Tampon Tim"—and Why Democrats Embrace It
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