‘Momnibus’ bills would expand access to doulas, provide essentials to new parents

The department says Pennsylvania averaged just under 133,000 births a year from 2018 to 2022. Providing one of each kit per baby at the estimated prices would cost the state just under $36 million annually.

“We will be paying for some of these items twice,” state Rep. Kate Klunk (R., York) argued on the House floor, adding, “This bill does not target the moms who need it the most.”

The state House also took recent action on a priority for Shapiro: putting free period products in public schools. “Girls deserve to have peace of mind so they can focus on learning,” the governor said in his February budget address.

Karla Coffman, a certified school nurse at York Suburban High School, told Spotlight PA that every day she sees students who lack period products or attempt to use something else in their place.

While toilet paper or paper towels may be more accessible, they are unhygienic, Coffman said, and can lead to embarrassment at best or infection at worst.

“You need to calm them down and get them back to learning,” she added.

That’s why she buys a couple of boxes of period products each year to keep on hand. However, the school district considers the expense nonessential, and some community partners — such as a church next door that runs a food pantry for the school’s low-income students — won’t pay for tampons.

The state House voted 117-85 in favor of a bill that would appropriate $3 million for a free period product program.

Periods are “not a dirty thing to talk about. It’s very natural,” state House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D., Philadelphia) told Spotlight PA. “And it’s something that not only we should talk about, but most importantly, we should meet the need because we’re able to do so.”

Most Republican representatives voted against the bill, including state Rep. Stephanie Borowicz (R., Clinton), who said the proposal “is another step by the governor and Democrats to provide everything to you, which leads to communism.”

Immediately after Shapiro’s address, state Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland) told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the governor’s proposal was “straight-on, full-fledged, spend, spend, spend,” citing his pitch to put “sanitary napkins in schools” as an example.

Pressed a week later in a TV interview, Ward struck a more conciliatory tone, saying that she wasn’t criticizing the pitch and that it was inexpensive.

“If there’s a need, we’ll do it,” she said, “but I have never, ever had a school come to me and say it’s a need.”

The bills are now in the hands of the Republican-controlled state Senate, which must consent to any new spending and has frequently criticized Democrat’s spending proposals.

With higher-than-expected state revenues, though, some new spending could be on the table.

“Divided government invariably requires a degree of give and take,” state Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R., Indiana) told Spotlight PA last week.

Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom producing investigative and public-service journalism that holds the powerful to account and drives positive change in Pennsylvania.