Arkansas Period Action Day: Closing Speech 2022

She still remembers the first time she got her period on a December morning in 7th grade, horrified as she quietly struggled, grappling with intense pains throughout the entirety of her lower abdomen. While she was unsure of what exactly was happening, she knew that it was meant to remain a secret. A secret. She accepted that it was a secret—not to be shared. She was okay with sacrificing her desire for knowledge to elude societal embarrassment. Even at the age of 12, she acknowledged these hefty restraints. As questions swirled throughout her head about what was happening to her, she wondered if she was dying. Would she be okay? Why could she not figure out what was wrong with her?  She genuinely was questioning whether something was wrong with her–whether she was broken. This is the story of too many young individuals, myself included. All of these issues could have been avoided by improving menstrual education in schools and implementing comprehensive programs. Our menstruators should not have to feel burdened by and completely unaware of natural processes. 

As months passed since my first period and I simply grew to accept it into my lifestyle, I became increasingly aware of the sheer discrimination faced by the average menstruator. Arkansas has only contributed to this marginalization. Arkansas is one of the 30 states who still chooses to categorize menstrual products as luxury products and taxes them accordingly, furthering rates of period poverty. Too many menstruators are incapable of accessing necessary sanitary products due to their unnecessarily inflated and taxed prices, causing a collective decline in menstrator’s mental and physical health with preventable STIs and STDs, alongside heighted rates of anxiety and depression. The overwhelming politicization and stigmatization of menstruation and menstrator’s bodies in this state is unacceptable. With so many individuals, demographics, and groups affected by the intersectionality of this issue, we need to ensure that menstrual products are available to all those who need it. 

In my own life specifically, I have witnessed the undeniable health care disparities presented by the inaccessibility of these products manifested in school districts. While I am fortunate to attend a school that is capable of providing products to students, I recognize that  too many schools are incapable of providing these products due to a lack of resources. These are locations meant to provide safe and supportive atmospheres to students. As a student, my friends and I should not have to worry about whether or not our education will be affected by a process that we can’t even control. We should only be concerned with our primary ability to study and build our future. 1 in 4 students who menstruate face period poverty, according to Period, and an even larger number has admitted to personally being absent from class or knowing someone who was forced to skip as a result of their inability to access sanitary products. How long are we, as a community, going to continue to allow the inaccessibility of these medical necessities to interfere with the education and social mobility of our upcoming generation? These products are medical necessities. Why are they still not treated as such? What world have we accepted to live in where a product to stop you from bleeding is considered a “luxury”? 

These products are being overly taxed and inflated, as if it is a choice to menstrate, which is only exacerbating period poverty and the increasingly limited ability of menstruators to afford them. Our society’s continued negligence of this issue has only resulted in the further creation of acrimonious divides in our state between income gaps. By reducing school attendance through a lack of period products in schools, the circulation of education throughout regions already lacking in these resources is only further stunted, upholding and furthering the health and socioeconomic disparities rampant throughout our nation. 

School should be a place my peers and I can go to without having to constantly worry about our ability to afford medical necessities. My body should not be an obstacle to my education. Menstruation is a natural process, not a choice, and both the government and the schools that claim to support students should recognize that. Not only would providing free period products in schools improve students’ engagement, attendance, and participation in classes, but it would also help to provide more economically feasible products for menstruating students who are struggling to obtain them individually. Continuing to ignore the issue at hand is simply limiting the professional and educational potential and opportunities offered to students to mold their respective futures and our future society. Through providing these products in schools, we could slowly reverse the inaccessibility of menstrual products, a factor that also contributes to menstruators' decline in physical health and mental wellbeing in a systematic approach. 

This widespread phenomenon of period poverty has triggered effects surpassing just academic impacts. Enduring period poverty instigates a negative impact on menstruators' mental health. It curates feelings of shame and heightened rates of anxiety and depression throughout menstruators. Again, these issues could be resolved by ensuring schools have the resources necessary to offer these products freely to students, fighting this issue one step at a time. As an individual who has been blessed with the ability to access products at school, I acknowledge how important this feature has played in dealing with periods, which oftentimes are unexpected. 

As students, we deserve to feel comfortable while learning. We deserve to freely invest in our education and our futures despite our economic standing. We deserve to feel and be our best selves by having access to these medical necessities in schools. And most importantly, we deserve to feel and be human.

- Anya Choudhary -