Periods for Pence

Submission 5,817

About

Periods for Pence is an online campaign encouraging abortion-rights activists to direct detailed descriptions of their menstrual cycles toward Republican Governor of Indiana Mike Pence to protest his support of legislation restricting women's reproductive freedom.

Origin

In March 2016, Pence signed into law Indiana's controversial House Bill 1337,^[4] which barred doctors from performing abortion operations conducted due to the race, gender or abnormality of the fetus. On March 28th, the Periods for Pence Facebook^[1] page was created to encourage critics of the new law to contact Pence with descriptions of their menstrual cycles (shown below). Within four months, the page gained over 67,600 likes.

Spread

Also in late March 2016, the @PeriodsforPence^[2] Twitter feed was launched. In the coming weeks, many Twitter users posted various reports about the periods to Pence's account (shown below).

On April 7th, The New York Times^[3] published an article about the online campaign, followed by NPR^[5] the next day. On July 15th, 2016, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump announced that Pence had been selected as his running made in the upcoming presidential election. Following the announcement, the campaign saw a large resurgence on Twitter along with the hashtag #PeriodsforPence^[10] (shown below).

Meanwhile, the @TamponsForTrump^[9] Twitter feed was launched in protest of Pence's selection as Trump's running mate. In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the campaign, including The Daily Dot,^[5] Yahoo News,^[6] Raw Story^[7] and Bustle.^[8]