Is there a woman in this country who hasn't at some point complained about her period? I can't imagine that there is. What if menstruating went beyond the cramps, button-straining bloating, mood swings that range from tearing up at every little thing to wanting to kick down the cubicle walls? What if you didn't have access to basic supplies? What if you had to ration out far too few tampons and pads over the course of the month, or even had to find a way to make your own?

This is the situation women in our country's prisons cope with on a monthly basis. The details, quite frankly, make my own complaints fall apart at the seams.

Access to feminine hygiene products, even for those people who struggle to stretch a budget as far as they can, seems like a necessity. Even when a girl or woman is without, there's inevitably a friend, stranger in the next stall, or gym teacher to hand out a tampon or pad or two. Up now on the Ms. magazine blog, reporter Maya Schenwar says that, over the course of four years of reporting on women in the prison system, she repeatedly hears inmates voice their own complaint that there simply are not enough products given to women who have their periods.

Schenwar has received a report from one prisoner who said they are allotted only three pads per month, another says she's eligible to receive five free pads per week. 

"At other facilities," she writes, "there are no giveaways at all."

The current economy has only put a bigger dent in how many products are available to facilities.

"Since the advent of the recession, budget cuts at prisons often hit women-specific services first, and 'fringe' benefits like feminine hygiene products are some of the first to go," Schenwar notes.

Female prisoners are left with few options. One of them is to buy products from the commissary. While this may appear to be a fair compromise, making purchases requires the prisoner to have access to cash and the products come at a high price. One prisoner tallied the price of tampons at $5.00 each and pads at $3.20 each at the commissary in her facility. This exorbitant price for one item is comparable to a box of 18 or 20 at any grocery store, online drugstore, and even inflated convenience store pricing.

She also notes that women sometimes have to order products from the commissary and wait a week or more for them to arrive. This clearly requires planning ahead in addition to being able to attain the money to make the purchase. Even after menstruating for years and years, how many women do you know who aren't taken by surprise by their period regularly?

The other option is for inmates to fashion their own feminine hygiene products out of toilet paper. Although toilet paper is also rationed, women teach each other how to mold their own tampons out of small amounts. Some guards, however, won't allow use of homemade supplies, and the mother of a female prisoner explained that "some of the women have had to have homemade ones made from toilet paper removed."

Schenwar says the supply shortage causes tension as women grapple for their own products. She also mentions the concern of the personal and collective hygiene issues of so many women living in tight quarters and menstruating at the same time without adequate ways of keeping clean and tending to their bodies' needs.

She says emphatically, "Pads and tampons should not be viewed as fringe benefits, luxuries deserved only by prisoners with cash to spare. Regardless of budget cuts, prisons must maintain a certain basic level of comfort and dignity for their inmates."

I agree wholeheartedly with Schenwar and I fear that there are many people out there who will say that prisoners do not deserve any kind of comfort or dignity while they are serving time. I think this issue is far more than that, however. Menstruating is, for the women who do or are still menstruating, a basic function of our biology, like sleeping, going to the bathroom, coughing to clear our throats. Prisons offer beds, toilets, and medication to address these needs. So why would they not allocate the funds for the supplies needed to address female-specific needs?

For generations, activists have been small and significant strides to gain equity for women in the voting booth, in the workplace, in the classroom, in the courts, and in the many other systems of our culture. Apparently, there is much work to be done to ensure that basic health requirements -- we're not talking about experimental drugs or expensive treatments or brand-name medications, just the same bags and boxes of tampons and pads any dollar store or doctor's office carries -- are fairly, healthfully met.

As it stands, denying women prisoners access to feminine hygiene products, whether doled out or purchased or DIYed, seems just plain appalling, disgusting, and wrong.