Atlanta City Council considers providing free women's health products in city buildings

ATLANTA - As the Atlanta City Council considers an ordinance to provide free feminine hygiene products in all their facilities, nonprofits on the frontlines of period poverty say the need for this type of legislation couldn’t be greater.  

Jamie Lackey is the CEO and founder of Helping Mamas - an organization that distributes millions of products to women in need each year.

Their second most distributed item is period products.

"Last year we distributed 810,000 products to about 32,000 individuals," Lackey said. 

 She said 800,000 period products in a year may sound like a lot, but it hardly makes a dent in the need in metro Atlanta.

"We're skimming the surface and that's how we always feel, that we're putting a Band-Aid on it," Lackey said. 

The nonprofit head says period poverty means many teen girls have to miss school and women have to miss work because they're deciding between paying for period products and basic essentials.

"We hear daily that people are having to make these tough choices. And so what they did is, they chose food that month, they chose to pay their light bill that month … but then what happens when they have to stay home is, if they're an hourly worker, and they're not getting vacation then they're not getting their income. And it just becomes this vicious cycle," Lackey said. 

So she applauded the proposed Atlanta City ordinance that would make period products available in all city facilities.

City Councilmember Liliana Bakhtiari is the ordinance's main sponsor.

"Anything that can get us towards making hygiene products more accessible means that we are helping more people not miss out on their day-to-day lives. And we're assisting in eradicating hygiene poverty," Bakhtiari said. 

She says she was inspired by Macon-Bibb County passing a similar ordinance, and she’s confident the bill has enough support to pass.

"This legislation has 13 sponsors, so I have every confidence it's going to pass," Bakhtiari said. 

But even after introducing the bill weeks ago, it was hung up in committee. 

"My plan is to have everything completed before we even hit our budget cycle in June and hopefully start implementing this by summer," Bakhtiari said. 

Lackey says most of their distribution goes to people in Atlanta, but if this ordinance passes, it could free up some of their supply for other areas that need it.

"So now it allows us to be able to shift maybe to somewhere else that doesn't have that," she said. 

And Lackey hopes this will inspire other metro area municipalities to do the same.

 "I mean, how exciting would that be for an entire metro area to say that 'We've got women taken care of. We value women,'" Lackey said.