The Fight to End Period Poverty in Utah

The first thing I noticed about the room—the visual that sank in and made itself at home—wasn’t the large u-shaped desk at the front, or the senate committee members milling near the back. No, what I noticed first was that it was filled with women: middle school girls sitting shyly in the front row, twenty- and thirty-somethings in smart pantsuits chatting excitedly together, an aunt with her niece, mothers and daughters, middle aged women, one with a stream of white hair flowing down her back.

Every one of them was in the East Senate building that February afternoon to voice their support for HB162, a bill created by women for women that aims to put free period products in every women’s and all-gender restroom in every public and charter K-12 school in the state.