You're sitting at your desk in Geometry class, taking notes for the upcoming test, when you feel a sharp tug in your gut. Oh no. It's your period. Ugh not now. No problem! You'll just slide a tampon up your sleeve and ask to use the restroom, right?

Wrong. You have no tampons. You have no pads. You have to timidly raise your hand to ask to go to the nurse for a "female emergency" and look down as you leave behind a snickering classroom full of pre-pubescent teens and a male teacher with a displeased look on his face. When you reach the nurse you ask for a pad, but she shakes her head. All out! The nurse has to buy the sanitary products herself because the school doesn't provide them, and now she's all out of her monthly supply. Reluctantly, you trudge over to the bathroom, lock yourself in a stall, and start to remove as much toilet paper as possible for a makeshift pad that you'll probably bleed through anyways. As you furiously rip up pieces you wonder, why is this white paper considered a necessity by all, but period products aren't?

This one-time incident happened to me when I had the privelage of forgetting to pack an extra pad. Others are not so lucky. This story is a recursive reality for thousands of US students from low-income households who cannot afford costly feminine hygiene products, and do not have them readily available when their period arrives. These children end up missing valuable instruction time, sometimes even skipping school, and are put at an educational disadvantage in comparison to their peers, who are able to afford these biological necessities. The shame and stigma surrounding menstruation also negatively affects the mental health of these adolescents, further detrimenting them.

Ideally, all US students should have access to free menstrual products at their public schools. Providing free products to those who need them the most is the first step.

We call on the governement of the United States of America, The Department of Education, The Department of Health, Secretary of Education Betsy Devos, and President Donald J. Trump to require federal public secondary schools to provide free feminine hygiene necessities to students who already qualify for free meals or are acknowledged by the school as a low-income students.

Progress has been made, but nothing has been done about this on a national scale in the US.

The United Kingdom has made pads and tampons available for free for public school children on free meal plans. Their change started with a petition just like this. Now it's time for the US to follow in suit.

The State of California has recently required public secondary schools with a significant student population living in poverty to provide free pads and tampons in bathrooms. Yet this is only one state out of 50.

Always, a major American feminine hygiene product company, has started the campaign #EndPeriodPoverty, on a mission to donate millions of pads to schoolgirls in need. But why should we rely on corporations and NGO's to address this issue when the government is fully capapble of doing so and providing it universally?

The US Governement should make it compulsory for federal public schools to provide free menstrual hygiene products to menstruators considered at or below the poverty line, in a fashion similar to federally reduced/free school meals.

Please sign & share the petition! We must propose this to the government as soon as possible. All American children have a right to their education, and we can't let the fact that they bleed hold them back.