Feeling 'humiliated' after she was denied menstrual products while in police custody, a woman is filing a lawsuit against the NYPD for violating her civil rights.
While activists and advocates have fought for access to free period products for incarcerated women in federal prisons — and won — there is another group that continues to be denied access to tampons and sanitary pads: individuals being held in police custody. Now that, too, is prompting activism — and legal action.
When the officer went on to confirm with a woman on staff that they had no tampons or sanitary pads to give her, Flores alleges, “They looked at me and they said, ‘There’s a bathroom there and there’s toilet paper. Figure it out.’” “For me to not know when it would arrive or if I would have the opportunity to ask him to bring it to me — I didn’t know what to do. I was nervous and scared — scared that I was going to get an infection,” Flores tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “I tried to put as much toilet paper as I could but my underwear was ruined and bloody. I could actually smell it. No one should have to smell the blood soaking through their underwear because they didn’t have a tampon available.
Failing to provide menstrual products to its menstruating detainees — amounting to approximately 100,000 each year, the lawsuit states — demonstrates a “pattern of deliberate indifference to the medical needs of women in NYPD custody,” and one that is discriminatory and which violates their constitutional rights.
“The truth of the matter is, for anyone who menstruates, [they deserve] the ability to manage it with dignity, with proper information and education, and that certainly extends to the products that we use to manage menstruation – pads, tampons, cups and otherwise,” Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, who serves as the vice president for development at the NYU Brennan Center for Justice, tells Yahoo Lifestyle.
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