What it took to get state to relent on — tampons?

Attention all men of the Arizona Legislature: You can breathe a sigh of relief.

It appears you aren’t going to have to endure further discussions about women’s menstrual flows.

A bill that would mandate that female prison inmates be given greater access to feminine hygiene products is dead.

House Rules chairman T.J. Shope told me that he won’t be hearing the bill. That’s because the state Department of Corrections has assured him that it will take care of the problem without a change in state law.

“I have encouraged them to do right by the folks that are in the system,” Shope, a Coolidge Republican, told me.

By doing right, I hope he means that female inmates won’t have to work 27 hours to buy themselves a box of tampons.

Or that they won’t have beg a guard to give them another pad while bleeding through their paltry stash of pads.

Or that they won’t be held accountable for blood on their uniforms when the pads inevitably fail.

Given that the DOC already is in hot water — and facing fines of up to $650,000 — for providing inmates with inadequate health care, I’m not holding my breath that tampons are headed to Perryville.

Currently, the DOC hands out 12 sanitary pads a month to each of its female inmates at the Perryville prison, where the state’s 4,000 female inmates are housed. They can ask for more but some former inmates say guards have been known to say no.

In any event, a woman isn’t allowed to have any more than 24 pads in her cell.

Because ... what? ... she might beat a guard about the head and shoulders with the things?

I don’t know what genius came up with the number 12, but I’m guessing it was a guy.

And so comes Rep. Athena Salman, D-Tempe, with House Bill 2222, a proposed law requiring state prison officials to supply female inmates with an unlimited supply of feminine hygiene products.

Former inmates and other women testified last week in excruciating detail about menstrual flows and such, trying to explain the problem of heavy flows and thin pads to the clearly uncomfortable and slightly skeptical allmale Committee on Military, Veterans and Regulatory Affairs.

Chairman Jay Lawrence, R-Scottsdale, wasn’t loving the topic.

“I’m almost sorry I heard the bill ...” he said. “I didn’t expect to hear pads and tampons and the problems of periods because yes, I know about them.”

Other legislators worried that unfettered access to hygiene products might prompt masses of women to

spread chaos via Kotex, employing the pads as weapons to damage the plumbing or cover security cameras. Ridiculous.

The specter of an all-male panel was enough to prompt women to begin sending tampons and pads to the state Capitol. (Shope tells me he’ll gladly take them to a domestic-violence shelter if the DOC can’t use them.)

It all boils down to this: The DOC is limiting access to sanitary pads because it can and it’s refusing to supply what should be standard issue — tampons.

Because ... what ... the inmates will fashion them into bullets and fire at the guards?

To be fair, the DOC does allow inmates to buy tampons. They just have to work 27 hours to be able to afford a box of them, given their 15-cent-an-hour pay.

I couldn’t reach the DOC late Monday for details on how it plans to change the rules.

Shope says the new policy should be coming in a week or two.

“I have urged them to greatly increase the number,” he said, “because I do believe the number is too low.” Laughably so, I would say. Tragically so, when I think about what it must do to a woman’s dignity to have to beg for a sanitary pad.

The question is, why does it take possible legislative action to get the DOC to pay attention to a basic health need of 4,000 of its inmates?