(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Beginning next school year, California public schools and colleges will be required to offer free menstrual products in restrooms under a new bill signed Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The bill, called the Menstrual Equity for All Act of 2021, applies to public schools serving students in grades six to 12, community colleges and the California State University System, according to the bill’s sponsor, Democratic Assemblymember Cristina Garcia.

“Our biology doesn’t always send an advanced warning when we’re about to start menstruating, which often means we need to stop whatever we’re doing and deal with a period,” she said in a statement. “Often periods arrive at inconvenient times. They can surprise us during an important midterm, while playing with our children at a park, sitting in a lobby waiting to interview for a job, shopping at the grocery store, or even standing on the Assembly Floor presenting an important piece of legislation.”

“Having convenient and free access to these products means our period won’t prevent us from being productive members of society, and would alleviate the anxiety of trying to find a product when out in public,” she said.

Garcia was also sponsor of legislation that was signed into law in 2017 that ensures low-income schools in California provide students with free menstrual products.

She said the new law that will provide free products to even more students was inspired by Scotland, which last year became the first country in the world to provide period products to all women for free.

“Just as toilet paper and paper towels are provided in virtually every public bathroom, so should menstrual products,” she said in a statement. “It is time we recognize and respond to the biology of half the population by prioritizing free access to menstrual products, and eliminating all barriers to them.”

Period poverty, when people cannot afford even the most basic of period supplies like pads and tampons, is an issue that affects women around the world.

At least half a billion women and girls globally lack facilities for managing their periods, according to a 2015 report from the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

Poor menstrual hygiene poses health risks for women, including reproductive issues and urinary tract infections.

The taboo around menstruation and the lack of access to menstrual products also hurts women economically because it costs them money for products and may keep them from jobs and school, advocates say.

In the U.S., where women make up more than half of the population, women are more likely than men to live in poverty, and they spend an average of 2,535 days in their lifetime, or almost seven years, on their periods, according to UNICEF.

A lack of access to menstrual products and education affects one in 10 college students in the U.S., according to a study released earlier this year.

Congress last year passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act that included a provision allowing people to use Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) dollars to buy menstrual products like pads, tampons, liners and menstrual cups.

Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., who was instrumental in adding that provision, re-introduced earlier this year in Congress the Menstrual Equity for All Act of 2021, which would, among other things, require employers with 100 or more employees to provide free menstrual products and would require all federal public buildings to provide free menstrual products in classrooms.

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(PRESIDIO COUNTY, Texas) — Americans remain deeply polarized over the renewed push to get the country vaccinated.

Nowhere is such a divide more evident than in Texas, where the vaccination rates tend to vary drastically from county to county.

Presidio County — a remote area of southwest Texas, home to approximately 7,800 people — while rural, boasts the state’s highest vaccination rate, with nearly every one of its eligible residents fully vaccinated.

In the county, cell service is often spotty, and the closest medical center is hours away from most homes, but residents who chose to get vaccinated said they saw it as a matter of life or death.

Rosendo Scott, a Vietnam veteran, who is battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, was more than willing to roll up his sleeve when he became eligible for a vaccine.

“We’re so isolated that we could easily just fall like dominoes, if something wasn’t done,” he told ABC News.

Big Bend Regional Medical Center serves approximately 25,000 residents in a vast 12,000 square mile area, Dr. Adrian Billing, chief medical officer at the hospital, said.

“It’s a 90-to-150-mile one-way trip to get to the emergency room, so I think some of that, just recognizing how limited we are for health care, contributed to our high vaccination rates,” Billing said.

Given the extremely high demand for vaccination, Billing said, all of the county’s available health care workers were pulled away from other duties in order to assist with the shots.

“We had to shut down our medical and dental service lines, and our behavioral health service lines, on these days that we did 500 or 600 vaccines at a time,” Billing said, adding that he has not recently seen a single vaccinated patient wind up in the hospital.

Scott explained that he has a very high level of trust in his health care providers, and thus, in their recommendation that he get vaccinated.

“I’m a believer in science,” Scott said.

The county’s impressive vaccination rate has kept residents safer, local leaders said, especially the community’s youngest members.

Scott’s wife, Allison, who is the principal of Marfa High School, in Presidio County, told ABC News that thanks to the county’s high vaccination rate, there have not been any coronavirus cases in the K-12 public school system since school started.

“So far — and this is our eighth week of school — we haven’t had a positive case, so we’re remaining hopeful,” she said.

However, more than 620 miles away, in Lamar County, the story is very different. Despite the availability of vaccines, only 40% of the residents have been fully vaccinated.

Klark Byrd, the managing editor of The Paris News, a small town newspaper, said he believes vaccine hesitancy in Lamar has been largely driven by residents’ “distrust in the government, distrust in the vaccine makers, [and] distrust, based on misinformation that’s found on social media sites.”

Given the low rate of vaccination in the county, Byrd has been printing op-eds, urging residents to talk to their doctors.

Although Byrd himself has not been vaccinated, due to a pre-existing health condition, he said he is taking all the necessary precautions to keep himself safe, with hand sanitizer, masks and social distancing.

“Sometimes, I’m the only one with a mask, and that’s concerning, but I maintain my distance with people. If I turn down an aisle at Walmart, and there’s a bunch of people, I will avoid that aisle and wait till it clears out,” he said.

Among the many who have opted not to get the shot is Kacy Cole.

Despite the fact that he has seen firsthand how serious COVID-19 can be, with several close friends and family, including his wife, contracting the virus, Cole said he has not reconsidered his anti-vaccine stance.

“It did not,” Cole told ABC News. “We prayed about it and we firmly believe that a lot of faith is involved in a lot of things we do.”

The decision of Cole, and other residents not to get vaccinated has been a tough pill to swallow for many front-line workers.

Dr. Amanda Green, the Lamar County health director and the local hospital’s chief medical officer, explained she wants to do her utmost to keep her community healthy, and the public educated about vaccines, but she tries to be realistic in her awareness that she may never be able to convince everyone.

“There are some people that I think they’ll just never change, no matter what,” Green told ABC News.

From Green’s perspective, such vaccine hesitancy can be a fatal choice. She pointed to Ronnie Stanley, the husband of a local nurse who chose not to get vaccinated. After falling ill to COVID-19, he wound up in the ICU, and died late last month.

“No one is invincible to this disease, it doesn’t care, it doesn’t discriminate,” Stanley’s widow, Amanda, told ABC News. She had urged him to get the shot, from the very beginning, but he was set in his ways, she said.

“He knew that it was as real as what it is, (but) he didn’t know that he would have been affected the way he did. I think had he known, then absolutely, he would have vaccinated and, you know, saved us all the torment that we’ve seen the last month. But yes, he was unvaccinated, and others believe that plays a big role in his death,” Amanda said

She is now seeking to convince those who are still hesitant, by telling his story.

“I don’t believe it has anything to do with politics,” she said about the COVID-19 vaccine. “I believe that this vaccine was created by brilliant doctors and scientists, and God gave them those abilities. And that’s what people need to understand, it’s a selfless act when you get vaccinated. It’s not for yourself, but it’s for those that you need to protect.”

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