Teh One Who Knocks
10-18-2019, 10:02 AM
By Abbey Crain | AL.com
https://i.imgur.com/dwOTu2N.jpg
Saturday is the first National Period Day, a day Alia Carter wants to use to destigmatize periods and call for an end to the tax on period products in Alabama.
Carter said she struggled with heavy periods and debilitating cramps as a teenager and hopes to bring awareness to period stigma so young people have an easier time at school and period products become more accessible.
“I've been talking about this, especially with men,” she said, “and they give me this look of “periods? Oh, that's gross.’ It's not gross, it’s something that 50 percent of the population goes through. It's where your children came from. It's where you came from.”
Alabama’s National Period Day rally will be held at Tropicaleo in Birmingham from 2 to 4 p.m. The event will include face painting, spoken word and a chance to share period horror stories.
According to period.org one in four women struggle to afford period products and 46 percent of low-income women had to choose between a meal and period products. Carter argued period products should be freely available in prisons, schools and homeless shelters.
Alabama is one of 35 states that tax period products and are not deemed “necessities.” Carter said the rally in Alabama should urge legislators to end the taxing of period products.
A 2014 report by the U.S. Department of Justice about sexual abuse of inmates at Tutwiler Prison for Women said tampons and sanitary pads were not adequately provided, which created a black market that included submitting to unwanted sexual advances to obtain the products.
Rep. Rolanda Hollis, D-Birmingham in April 2019 said she heard from family members of incarcerated women at Tutwiler that inmates made their own menstrual products because they had difficulty obtaining them.
Alabama voted in May to require state penitentiaries and local jails to provide menstrual products to inmates.
https://i.imgur.com/dwOTu2N.jpg
Saturday is the first National Period Day, a day Alia Carter wants to use to destigmatize periods and call for an end to the tax on period products in Alabama.
Carter said she struggled with heavy periods and debilitating cramps as a teenager and hopes to bring awareness to period stigma so young people have an easier time at school and period products become more accessible.
“I've been talking about this, especially with men,” she said, “and they give me this look of “periods? Oh, that's gross.’ It's not gross, it’s something that 50 percent of the population goes through. It's where your children came from. It's where you came from.”
Alabama’s National Period Day rally will be held at Tropicaleo in Birmingham from 2 to 4 p.m. The event will include face painting, spoken word and a chance to share period horror stories.
According to period.org one in four women struggle to afford period products and 46 percent of low-income women had to choose between a meal and period products. Carter argued period products should be freely available in prisons, schools and homeless shelters.
Alabama is one of 35 states that tax period products and are not deemed “necessities.” Carter said the rally in Alabama should urge legislators to end the taxing of period products.
A 2014 report by the U.S. Department of Justice about sexual abuse of inmates at Tutwiler Prison for Women said tampons and sanitary pads were not adequately provided, which created a black market that included submitting to unwanted sexual advances to obtain the products.
Rep. Rolanda Hollis, D-Birmingham in April 2019 said she heard from family members of incarcerated women at Tutwiler that inmates made their own menstrual products because they had difficulty obtaining them.
Alabama voted in May to require state penitentiaries and local jails to provide menstrual products to inmates.