A new “period pantry” offering free pads, tampons, heating pads and even Midol for people in need has been placed outside the Orlando Women’s Center just south of downtown, one of the city’s last remaining abortion clinics.
It’s a project organized by local activist group Stand With Abortion Now that’s meant to help connect people who have fewer financial resources with menstrual products that they can take with them, no strings attached.
According to the National Organization of Women, the average woman spends about $20 each menstrual cycle, a figure that can add up to as much as $18,000 over the course of a person’s lifetime.
People who are homeless or otherwise struggling to afford basic expenses, like housing or groceries, can be even more vulnerable to period poverty, a concept defined as insufficient access to period products and sanitation facilities.
“Being downtown, we get a lot of foot traffic and a lot of unhoused people walking back and forth,” said Debbie Frare, a volunteer with SWAN. “It’s a good location for folks to use it, and we just think it’s a way that we can help the community — help women — which is especially important to us.”
Stand With Abortion Now is a grassroots, volunteer-based group of abortion clinic escorts that launched shortly after the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, the overturning of the constitutional right to abortion after nearly 50 years.
The SWANs, as they dub themselves, help to protect and shield patients of the local abortion clinic from a motley crew of protesters, who will often try to film or otherwise shame those who walk into the clinic’s doors. When the abortion clinic was facing risk of closure a couple of years ago, due to steep fines from the state government, the group got national media attention for raising nearly $200,000 to help keep the doors open.
But Frare, who began her own volunteering days as a clinic escort back in the mid-1970s (just after abortion was first legalized) said SWAN also wanted to find other ways to help meet the needs of the community. “As a group, we did a brainstorm on things we could do that would help our patients, help our community, and the idea of a period pantry came up,” Frare explained.
It’s not a brand-new concept.
Tampa Bay Abortion Fund activist Bree Wallace opened her own period pantry in the Tampa Bay region back in 2023. And this year, inspired by other independent period pantries, local high school student Boey Cho similarly set up her own period pantry concept in Orlando, dubbed “Go With the Flo,” and established a 501(c)3 nonprofit in order to collect pantry donations.
As The Community Paper reported last month, Cho currently has three pink period pantries set up in Orlando proper: one at the thrift store Out of the Closet on Mills Avenue, another at Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani’s district office in Lake Eola Heights, and a private pantry at Grace Medical Center, a nonprofit faith-based organization in the same neighborhood that offers medical care to underserved communities.
“Menstruating isn’t something we can control as humans. It’s health care. Having access to products is health care, and people need to know that,” Cho told the paper.
As Cho said, for people who menstruate, bleeding isn’t a choice. If you live and work outside the home, managing that monthly cycle with products such as sanitary pads, tampons, a cup or even certain types of birth control (if you’re insured or can otherwise afford it) isn’t really a choice, either.
The struggle to afford period products, aka period poverty, however, is real. According to the Brookings Institute, period poverty has been linked to “negative impacts on education and psychosocial outcomes” and knows no geographic bounds, even in the richest country in the world. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that the cost of period products, specifically pads and tampons, was rising faster than food prices.
Frare herself bought a cabinet for SWAN’s new pantry online, and filled the pantry up with its initial batch of menstrual and other hygiene supplies for about $250, she said. Located outside the Orlando Women’s Center at 1103 Lucerne Terrace, she said their period pantry is “unlocked, open, accessible all the time” for anyone who needs it.
No one will be asking you about your income, your ID, or to perform any other form of means-testing. “I want people to know it’s there and available to any and everybody you know who needs it,” she said. “They’re welcome to come and take whatever they need.”
What: Orlando Period Pantry by SWAN
Where: 1103 Lucerne Terrace, Orlando, FL
Donate: To donate to SWAN’s period period pantry, you can provide monetary donations via the group’s GiveButter (a donation platform) or buy products off their Amazon wishlist. You can also find an Amazon wishlist for Cho’s “Go With The Flo” period pantries here.
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