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Thanks to inflation and the climate-change-induced increase in the cost of cotton, period poverty — the inability to afford menstrual products — has become a public health crisis in the United States, affecting two out of every five menstruating people. One in four menstruating students have said they have missed class or other school activities as a direct result of not being able to afford pads or tampons. In response to this, 27 states have started making them free at schools, so that students don’t have to worry about needing to run home in their gym clothes with a sweater tied around their waist — and Pennsylvania is (we hope) about to become the 28th.
By a vote of 117 to 85 this week, the Pennsylvania House voted in favor of a bill to establish a grant program to help schools buy pads and tampons for students who cannot otherwise afford them. Isn’t that nice?
Well, we certainly think so, but Rep. Stephanie Borowicz (R-Clinton) has other ideas. In response to the bill passing, Rep. Borowicz openly and publicly fretted that the program was just the first step in the march to communism.
“Just another step by the governor and Democrats to have government provide everything for you, which leads to communism. A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take everything away,” Borowicz said, overlooking the somewhat crucial fact that students rarely pay for these things (or anything else) out of their own pockets.
Yes, it sure is bad when the government provides people with things — you know, like they do with the entire public school system.
Let me just logic this out though. Under communism, everyone has tampons, and that’s bad — so it’s better for some students to not have tampons than for them to live under the evil communist tampon regime, because if the government gives the students tampons, the government can take them away and then no one will have any tampons and will be forced to just free bleed all over everything in their wake. I don’t know, it seems kind of unlikely.
Or is she suggesting that this will give students a taste for communism and they will start to believe in crazy things like single payer health care?
By that same token, Rep. Borowicz assumes that students who can’t afford to buy tampons or pads will grow up to love the capitalism that led to them not having any tampons or pads and having to miss class because of this. That also seems pretty unlikely. In fact, she might want to consider that this may make those students even more likely to embrace the evil communist tampon regime.
I always wonder what people like Rep. Borowicz think would happen if we got rid of all the social programs and didn’t provide anyone with anything and instead just let them suffer. Because I think it might look a little like the French Revolution. Or the Russian Revolution. Or pretty much any other revolution that started because people were super sick and tired of being very, very poor while others were very, very rich.
Ironically, the full “Is Your Washroom Breeding Bolsheviks?” poster that I used in the image above actually suggests that “harsh, cheap paper towels” in the washroom is what might cause one’s employees to turn to communism. The text below it reads “Employees lose respect for a company that fails to provide decent facilities for their comfort.” The moral of the story is actually meant to be that spending a little extra in order to make people comfortable is what will keep them from revolting against capitalism.
Luckily, Borowicz is in the minority here — although the bill now moves to the GOP-controlled state Senate, where we can assume there are a whole lot more of her. Hopefully, they can put aside their hatred of “free stuff” and choose to do what’s best for Pennsylvania students.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, whose proposed budget for 2024-25 includes $3 million to provide menstrual products to schools, praised the vote as a “big step forward,” in general, not towards communism, and indicated that he would sign it as soon as it hits his desk.
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