of Department Pennsylvania is expected to see an average of just under 133,000 births per year from 2018 through 2022. Providing one kit per baby at the estimated price would cost the state just under $36 million per year.
“Some of these items amount to double payment,” state Rep. Kate Crank (R-York) argued on the House floor, adding that “this bill does not target the mothers who need it most.”
The state legislature also recently took action on one of Governor Shapiro’s top priorities: providing free menstrual products to public schools. “Girls deserve to feel safe and focused on learning,” she said in her February budget address.
Carla Coffman, a certified school nurse at York Suburban High School, told Spotlight PA that she sees students every day who don’t have their own menstrual products or try to use something else instead.
Toilet paper and paper towels may be readily available, but they’re unsanitary and can be embarrassing at best and cause infections at worst, Coffman said.
“We need to calm them down and get them back to learning,” she added.
So she buys a few boxes of feminine hygiene products each year to keep on hand, but the school district considers the expense unnecessary, and some community partners, such as a neighboring church that runs a food pantry for the school’s low-income students, don’t pay for tampons.
The state Assembly voted 117-85 in favor of the bill. invoice This will provide $3 million to the free menstrual product program.
Periods “are not something to be embarrassed about talking about. They’re very natural,” Philadelphia Assembly Speaker Joanna McClinton (D) told Spotlight PA. “Not only is it something we should be talking about, but most importantly, we should be addressing that need because we can.”
Most Republicans voted against the bill, including state Assemblywoman Stephanie Borowitz (R-Clinton), who called the proposal “another step in the governor and Democrats’ efforts to give everything to our people. It’s communism.”
Shortly after Shapiro’s speech, state Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R-Westmoreland) told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the governor’s proposal was “straightforward, thorough: spend, spend, spend.” For example, he suggested providing sanitary napkins in schools..
In a television interview a week later, Ward struck a more conciliatory tone. She said she wasn’t criticizing the pitch. And it was cheap.
“If there’s a need, we’ll do it,” she said, “but the school has never come to me and said it’s necessary.”
The bill now heads to the Republican-controlled state Senate, which must agree to any new spending and has frequently criticized Democratic spending proposals.
But new spending could be on the table after state revenues came in higher than expected.
“Anytime you have divided government, there have to be some compromises,” state Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Ind.) told Spotlight PA last week.
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom that conducts investigative journalism and public service journalism that holds those in power accountable and drives positive change in Pennsylvania.
