Blake Neff of the Daily Caller reported yesterday that the UCLA paper the Daily Bruin published an opinion piece where the writer demands that tampons should be subsidized by taxpayers. According to the writer of the op-ed, the reasoning is that…well, we’ll let her explain it:
It’s about time that the federal government recognizes that even the most basic health care needs to start subsidizing the cost of tampons and pads for women, or covering the cost completely. This is only fair, since health insurance is supposed to cover the major aspects of a person’s health. But more importantly, cutting the cost of these products is a crucial step in normalizing menstruation within society, and it provides women who may not have access to these resources the opportunity to feel clean and comfortable during their period.
Periods are abnormal? We would never have guessed. It’s now a woman’s right to not feel dirty and uncomfortable. Add that to the list.
Periods are not abnormal. Every woman from the beginning of time has had them, and tampons and pads didn’t always exist. The invention of them is purely a convenience, not a necessity. Period. Suggesting that the need for them is an aspect of healthcare is preposterous.
She says that women living on the streets or living paycheck to paycheck may not be able to afford tampons, and so they might not be able to restock their supplies. “Not changing a tampon frequently enough can lead to complications like toxic shock syndrome or blood poisoning, among other things,” she writes.
Um, ew. Wouldn’t you dispose of the old one and go with some alternative if you had no tampons to use? Paper towel? Toilet paper? A sponge?
Not changing a tampon is not only dangerous to your health, but ineffective. Might as well free-flow to avoid TSS or blood poisoning. This is the only place where health care comes in to play on this topic, but a little personal responsibility for your own actions goes a long way in preventing that. There was a time when washcloths and towels were the only tools at a woman’s disposal. They are still a viable option. More inconvenient, yes. But as stated earlier, tampons and pads are a mere convenience, created through capitalism.
Rather than asking all of America to pay more money in taxes (which we know will just be wasted), how about people who are concerned about this ask the makers of Kotex, Tampax, and so forth to start donating? The prices might go up slightly, but the money would go to its intended target rather than government bureaucracy.
Also, it would help to get the word out that shelters need these items. Americans donate billions in money and items to charity every year. We doubt this need is even on most people’s radar. We know it’s never been on ours. But from now on when dropping off a box of clothes or a bag of food at a chosen charity or homeless shelter, it might make sense to include some tampons and pads from now on. There are several organizations that accept donations specifically for feminine hygiene products which can be found online, as well.
As for the really stupid part that writers on sites like National Review and Twitchy have focused on, here it is as it appears at the beginning of the Daily Bruin’s column:
Editor’s note: This blog post refers to individuals who menstruate as women because the author wanted to highlight gender inequality in health care. We acknowledge that not all individuals who menstruate identify as women and that not all individuals who identify as women menstruate, but feel this generalization is appropriate considering the gendered nature of most health care policies.
If you menstruate, you are a woman. It doesn’t matter which gender you call yourself. This matter has already been addressed, and it will continue to be addressed unless a day will come when all of society is brainwashed into buying the idea of having to address how people will feel over any well-established scientific “generalization.”
It seems, however, that people need to be reminded that this is Biology 101. Except in very rare exceptions, all mammals are born a male or a female. But because they are afraid to offend those everyday rare people who don’t identify with the genes they will never be able to escape, the editors of the daily rag at UCLA–we can still say “rag,” right?–took it upon themselves to add this unnecessary note.
While this was the part of the column that got most of the attention, it’s the bulk of the column that should concern most people. This idea of subsidizing or giving away free tampons to all women had better not catch on with the public or our legislators. The umbrella of feminine hygiene products is a $13 billion-a-year industry in the U.S. and may be over $20 billion by 2020. Imagine how much it would cost taxpayers if they had to pay for the bulk of these products for half the population.
We’re already all paying for birth control, abortions, prostate and breast exams, among everything else entailed within the monstrous disaster of Obamacare. If we’re forced to start paying for tampons and pantyliners, there will be more leaps in deciding what everyone should pay for next. Some parents won’t want to pay for Pampers, so no one should have to pay for their own Pampers. Some adults won’t want to pay for their Depends, so free bladder absorbency products for all! Then we can be a society that is taken care of from infancy to…never having to grow up, ever. We can all walk around with pee and poo in our disposable underwear to our hearts content and not have to worry about who will wipe our soiled tushies for us because the government will take care of that, since they would determine that to be a public health issue.
For the certain holdouts who insist on cleaning up after themselves, we might as well all get free toilet paper, too
And toothpaste…toothbrushes…dental floss. That concerns the public’s health. Can’t forget to give those away to everyone.
And razors. Nyquil.
Let’s just make places like Walgreen’s and CVS wholly taxpayer-funded entities. Might as well go for the entire shebang.
Because health, people.
