People often consider the library to borrow books. But it can be so much more than that.
As a full -time librarian in Brooklyn, New York, I know that the best libraries act as a community hub that ensures the needs of the people who live in the area. A need that has become more urgent in recent years is access to reproductive and sexual health sources.
For many decades, Planned Parenthood and local health clinics were the go-to-places for people to get information and services about menstrual health, sex education and access to abortion. But with abortic access and reproductive health care that are now being attacked by federal and national governments, These offices are close. According to the research organization for sexual and reproductive health and rights Guttmacher InstituteThe number of physical clinics fell by 5 percent in the US between 2020 and early 2024, from 807 to 765.
And local public libraries are emerging.
I knew about working in the public library of Brooklyn that some libraries creatively fill in the gaps in reproductive information and health care services. Here, for example, all branches have free product dispensers in their bathrooms. But I didn’t know how widespread these efforts were.
So I asked around. I interviewed librarians in large cities and small cities, from Georgia to California. I have also questioned librarians about Reddit, placed an anonymous survey about the subbreddit (or online community) called R/Libraries, which describes itself as “a place to discuss all aspects of libraries and library work.” I only got seven answers, which means that the survey was not statistically significant. But it was told anyway.
I discovered libraries about Reddit and in interviews with a wide range of reproductive justice initiatives. Some offer free pads and tampons. Others hold “Period parties’Where menstruating teenagers can celebrate their changing bodies.
A comment about language here: I will use the umbrella term ‘reproductive justice’ to describe all these initiatives. Other librarians prefer language such as ‘gender and sexuality education’.
Libraries find like -minded partners
At least two libraries – one in California and one in Wisconsin – got up with their local planned parenting to get reproductive justice programming in their branches.
In the spring of 2024, the Will and Ariel Durant Branch from the Public Library of Los Angeles turned their community space into an inviting space for incidental workshops. Under the leadership of a planned parenting facilitator, participants discussed topics such as gender expression, healthy relationships, sexually transmitted infections and self -defense in medical environments.
Each session different Villalta – the librarian for young adults and my personal friend – “” in a lot more seats than necessary “so that participants” could choose what felt comfortable for them “. They spread hand -outs over tables in the back so that people could take them discreetly and ensured that they place some seats close to the entrance because “some customers like to view things before they decide if they participate in the conversation.”
The Durant Branch serves the large LGBTQ+ population of the area, and people in the community have varied ways to express their gender and sexuality, Villalta said. Some customers can still find out how they identify. So the organizers were careful to frame sensitive conversations, for example about gender identity, as an exploration and learning opportunities – not a prescribed lesson.
Each planned parenting workshop usually attracted around six to ten people. But they also reached the wider community.
“Even if they were not present, customers gave a lot of positive feedback,” Villalta said. ‘To see [these programs] In the library is uplifting and really powerful. The library is now talking about things that people would rather not talk about. ‘
The success of the Durant library has translated into a system-wide chance. Nowadays, all 72 branches of De La Public Library can ask to host a workshop with a planned parenthood.
Periods ’embrace the joy’ in puberty
Brooke Newberry, public service manager at the La Crosse Public Library in Wisconsin, works together with her planned parenthood branch to host ‘period -parties’. At every event she sets 45 seats in the style of the class, with a table for the planned parenthood presenter in advance. It hangs Klatergoud curtains and uses pink and red items to determine the mood.
We “wanted it to look like a nice place to be,” said Newberry.
The local schools provide sex education, but Newberry wanted to embrace the joy in menstruation.
There are snacks and take-home period packages with pads, tampons, encouraging letters and some chocolate. Every session also includes menstrual education and games.
“We play period Bingo” on a plate with vocabulary words such as period, cramps, tampon and the like, Newberry said.
Winners receive small prizes, such as a squishmallow or a heating pillow.
The parties, now in their second year, are a huge success and “wonderfully intergenerational,” said Newberry. Some teenage girls who are present are brought by single fathers.
“Because they are like this:” I don’t know! “” Said Newberry.
Parents, teenagers and brothers and sisters commit themselves to shared experiences, in which older participants tell the story of their first period – a subject that some older generations have never openly discussed.
After an event, a caregiver told a historical party with a young girl Newberry who “his body went through the second puberty”, referring to menopause, and asked, “What should I do?”
So the library also collaborated with Planned Parenthood to organize menopause parties.
“It was much more difficult to find information about the menopause than periods,” said Newberry.
In the end, the events they created not only “people in their top 30 and 40s,” said Newberry, but also “their mothers.”
At each event, the facilitator explains the experiences that can come with the menopause, such as the smell of burning when nothing is on fire. Often the participants entered comments such as: “That happened to me in the past and I thought I was going crazy!”
But the educator assured the participants that they had actually experienced a symptom of the menopause, something that they may never have known without the menopause party of the Lacross library.
Libraries financed for publicly polarizing
But not all librarians have been able to offer reproductive health sources to members of the community who need this most.
Many of the people who responded to my Reddit survey and said that their libraries had no reproductive justice initiatives, explained that they found the subject too controversial. They were worried that even talking about reproductive justice could jeopardize their government financing.
Kati Hall, a librarian based in Texas, has observed this type of self -censorship. (We give Hall a pseudonym; Hall and another interviewed librarian who were for this story were afraid that they could be dealing with personal and professional consequences for publicly discussing their work.) Topics such as abortic access and sexual health are generally “just not spoken” at work, she said.
Hall became creative in an earlier Bibliotharian position in Georgia. She laid quietly pads and tampons in a basket in the women’s bathroom. The items were donated by themselves and other staff, not paid with tax money. They were never discussed or recognized by customers, as far as Hall knows. But the baskets were emptied routinely, so she continued to fill them again. She knew the supplies were needed.
But in Texas, which has some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the nation, the situation is different, she said. Because her library has been financed through the city, Stafftelder in the course of reproductive health.
As a result, Hall said: “I don’t know exactly what the customers need with regard to reproductive justice.”
Yet the library is an educational location. And for some customers in Texas, Leed Hall, their educational needs could be how they can get out of the state to gain access to abortion or gender -confirming care. Under those circumstances, Hall Me, the most important thing for librarians is “knowing the context” – and the law – “but not giving up and doing what you can do.”
An Indiana library finds a way
Despite the concerns about how the work will be observed by legislators and the public, some librarians have still found a way to get health education and supplies to the public reproductive.
In 2020, Fern, a library assistant at the Public Library of Monroe County in Indiana, who asked not to use their last name, worked on a proposal to place free period -product dispensers in both men’s and women’s bathrooms.
Fern was initially confronted with pushback. The then director of the library rejected the idea with what Fern remembered as a note that essentially said, “I don’t really want to do this.”
But three years later, Fern tried again with a new director.
“I then gave him my research from then and my current research,” they said. “I told him what I would like to do, and he was aware of it.”
The program was approved for a six -month process in collaboration with AuntAn organization that installs free product dispensers at schools and companies. Fern started working behind the scenes with colleagues to ensure that the launch succeeded.
They met the manager of the construction facilities, whose team would be in charge of installing and topping up the dispensers, and brought together a budget to finance the project. Fern also asked for staff feedback, so that they could solve problems for ‘all the worries they can have’.
In 2022, Tori Lawhorn, the communication and marketing director of the library, added another low to the budding reproductive justice initiative of the library. She had noticed that more customers would respond to questions about their reproductive rights.
“It was good then Roe v. Wade was destroyed, “she said. Indiana Quickly moved to prohibit abortion. The law was challenged before the court, but in 2023 a total abortion ban with limited exceptions came into effect.
In the midst of the confusion about abortic access, Lawhorn created an educational page on the website of the library called “Reproductive Rights Resources. “It explains the current policy, the legal fight that is underway and how the process influences the inhabitants of Indiana.
“It not only gave accurate information, but also confidential access to resources, so that customers could still get information without necessarily jeopardizing their safety or their identity,” Lawhorn said.
The site, which remains active today, lists reproductive care sources and contains a book list if people want more in -depth information about specific aspects of reproductive rights.
The aunt -flow project, now in the second year, gives people access to “products for which some people may have barriers,” said Lawhorn. The entire initiative was built on a principle of ‘fair access for everyone’.
Nowadays the free tampons and pads have become “very normal”, Fern added. “People just know they are there now and use them.”
Note of the editors October 1, 2025: This story has been updated to correct an incorrect last name that were unintentionally introduced during editing.
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