When Yraida Faneite was on trial for drug-related charges, the judge had to halt proceedings at one point because her period was so heavy that blood was running down her legs.
The same struggle followed her into a federal prison in Florida after she was convicted. For about a decade, officials allowed her only a small ration of menstrual products, and she couldn’t afford extra pads from the commissary. She bartered with other women. On her worst days, she tore up her own T-shirts and used them as makeshift pads.
When she told officers she needed to see a doctor and couldn’t safely continue a mandatory kitchen shift, she said, she was placed in solitary confinement. She eventually found out that her heavy bleeding was caused by cysts.
Incarceration is inhumane, and this is also inhumane.