Hello [insert name of congressperson],

We hope you and your family are doing well during this pandemic. We are reaching out to you today to ask you to consider marginalized genders during this pandemic as you craft phase four legislation. The outbreak of COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting women and people beyond the binary from spikes in domestic violence, decreased access to menstrual products, to the stripping of Constitutionally protected reproductive rights. We would urge you to advocate for the rights of marginalized genders in your response to the crisis. We applaud that you and your colleagues have made strides to protect some communities from the unique ways they are impacted by COVID-19. We urge you to do the same in adding provisions to account for domestic violence, menstrual equity, reproductive rights, and other gender equity issues.

During this unprecedented time that we remain quarantined in our homes, we encourage you to take into account domestic violence victims. These victims are effectively locked in their homes with their abusers. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, people have reported that their abusers are cutting them off from using sanitizers, soap, and showers. The World Health Organization has called on countries to include services addressing domestic violence in their COVID-19 response. European countries like France and Italy have put policies in place such as reporting to pharmacies and creating apps to report domestic violence without calling. We urge you as congresspeople to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and include domestic violence prevention in the next phase of COVID-19 legislation.

Furthermore, during these uncertain times, the ability to acquire basic items such as menstrual products has become a struggle for many. Although menstrual equity has been an issue for a long time, its severity has only increased during the rise of COVID-19. The CARES Act, a $2.2 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, has been a great first step towards improving menstrual equity by adding menstrual products to the list of items covered by Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). This allows the expenses for these products to go untaxed for people with HSAs but neglects menstruators who do not have HSAs, such as the impoverished. In these times of need, groups such as Period, the Menstrual Movement, have been straining their resources and scaling their distribution of menstrual products to be able to serve communities in need across the country. Another largely affected group is the incarcerated and undocumented menstruators in detention centers. A study was done by the Correctional Association of New York that found that only about 46% of menstruators in prisons have sufficient period care supplies. Even those who do have the products they need may have to go days before changing them, which can lead to severe health issues. Although the CARES Act was an immense first step towards more menstrual equity, the battle is far from over.

While crafting phase four legislation, we need to ensure that we are addressing how reproductive rights are being affected by the advent of COVID-19. Access to abortions are being stripped away, as the government is exploiting the current public health crisis to tone down abortion accessibility in order to advance their political agenda. Officials are banning abortion clinics, citing that they are non-essential and pose a risk of viral spread; however, their ulterior motive is to push an anti-abortion agenda. Similarly, needed health resources such as sexual health services are getting their funding thrown out the window. Most conservative voices in our government are using the COVID-19 crisis to further this agenda, taking advantage of a supposed lack of need for these services. Their argument for this is women can't have abortions because they are "elective" procedures; claiming that women can only have an abortion during this time if it is absolutely necessary. However, this rhetoric is harmful as this encourages the practice of unsafe abortions. Pushing an agenda that only some abortions are permissible does not expunge the woman’s need for these procedures, and doing so causes these marginalized genders to seek out more inimical measures. This often causes a spike in maternal deaths as well as a host of health issues such as hemorrhages, sepsis, and infertility as corroborated by the World Health Organization. Governors of Texas, Ohio, Iowa, and Alabama have issued laws, furthering one of these health crises, and we need to pressure our elected officials not to follow the same path.

We have laid out how the COVID-19 crisis is disproportionately affecting women and people beyond the binary. We urge you to include policies that would address the inequities during this hard time. As we have seen, some governors have restricted reproductive rights, rates of domestic abuse are skyrocketing, and menstruators struggle to gain access to menstrual hygiene products. Please take into account, as you all did in the first stimulus legislation, women and people beyond the binary in the next piece of legislation to respond to COVID-19. Thank you for your endless resolve to combat COVID-19. We hope you and your family are safe and healthy.

Sincerely,
Generation Ratify and Fellow Equality Advocates
[insert signatures + organization sign-ons]