The title is: What’s an Abortion Doula? They’re strangers who will hold your hand while you go under the knife.
To Marisa’s credit, there is a chance she had nothing to do with the title. I’ve written articles before where the title that was slapped on was one I had never seen.
But, that possibility aside, what a terrible title. The first part that pissed me off was “while you go under the knife.” What a sensationalist way to talk about abortion!!! Many of them don’t even involve “knives” or scalpels, as they are called by medical professionals. Most abortions are done using a manual vacuum aspirator, which uses a canula (long tube that suctions) not a knife. But the technicalities aside, it’s such a sensationalist way to talk about abortion. You’d think this might be an anti’s article about abortion doulas.
Then, she says this:
Even as a pro-choice feminist, when I heard about abortion doulas my first thought was: Are women really so fragile that they need to hire a complete stranger to hold their hand at the doctor’s?
Though I don’t share Doula Lori’s views, abortion doulas seemed a little unnecessary to me. Doulas don’t do anything during an abortion that a friend or clinic worker couldn’t do.
I can’t really understand how it can be feminist to say that women are FRAGILE if they need or want a support person during a medical procedure. Especially a medial procedure like an abortion or a birth. Let’s shame women for what they need! That’s totally feminist.
And if abortion doulas weren’t necessary (because a clinic worker or friend could play the role) then why are clinics in NYC banging down the doula project’s door? If these folks weren’t fulfilling a need they wouldn’t have a project. That’s the thing–the doctors and clinics like having the doulas there, and so do the women. That’s all that matters.
She ends the piece, thankfully, on a less dismissive note.
The success of the New York doula project has inspired women in other cities to mimic their efforts. There are groups in Asheville, N.C., Greensboro, N.C., and Seattle organizing abortion doulas, and the L.A. Doula Project will be opening in a clinic this spring. Pérez puts the whole thing into perspective for me with a story about her brother having emergency appendicitis. “I totally was his appendicitis doula,” she laughs. “My job is [to ask], ‘What can I do to make you feel better?’ ” What woman going through a fraught experience wouldn’t want that?
You can read the whole piece here. I’m glad that doulas who work across the spectrum of pregnancy are getting attention, but it’s frustrating not to be able to control the message.
I’m speaking at a great event next week in NYC, at Barnard College. If you are in NYC, you should check it out.
It’s a panel with Mary and Lauren, the two other co-founders of the Doula Project (and current coordinators!) as well as Aishia Domingue from the Brooklyn Young Mother’s Collective. It’s going to be an interesting conversation.
Reproductive Justice in Action
Aisha Domingue, Mary Mahoney, Lauren Mitchell, and Miriam Pérez
Panel Discussion:
Wednesday, 3/3, 6:30 pm
Sulzberger Parlor, 3rd Floor Barnard Hall
This panel will feature a group of reproductive justice activists and birth doulas who work across the spectrum of pregnancy, birth, and women’s health, connecting the traditional reproductive rights movement with new social justice activism that considers the complete physical, political, and economic well-being of girls and women. Birth doulas, as trained sources of physical, emotional, and educational support, work to empower women and support their reproductive choices. How does childbirth fit into the discussion around reproductive rights, a discussion that is often based around access to abortion and contraception? How can the reproductive justice framework help us consider institutional barriers, such as racism and poverty, that have limited women’s empowerment and decision-making when it comes to their reproductive health?
I’m also speaking at a couple of other places in the next few weeks, including Smith College, University of Iowa and University of Minnesota. Check out the details here, and if you’re interested in bringing me to speak email me.
I have another piece up at RH Reality Check today. Apparently it’s my week for publication! This one has a lot more opinion and snark than yesterday’s. I was responding to the recent efforts on behalf of the anti-choice community to argue that abortion is being used by groups like Planned Parenthood as a form of eugenics against women of color.
Latinas and other women of color don’t need to be protected by paternalistic ideologues motivated by a political agenda that disregards the needs of women of color and their families. So thanks for your concern, anti-choicers, but I think the women of color advocates working within the reproductive justice movement have got it covered. We’re working in those clinics you attack, we’re helping to shape policies and provide services in our communities, services that allow us to decide what our needs are.
We know whom we can trust to make decisions about family creation: women themselves. We don’t need limits on what services we can access. And we don’t need your ideological bullying.
The next time one of your crisis pregnancy centers, one of your dramatic billboards, or one of your bogus pieces of “sex and race selection” legislation actually works to support women through whatever choice they make for their families—we’ll talk.
There is a great article up at RH Reality Check, written by Mary Mahoney, one of the founders of The Doula Project. I’ve written about the NYC-based Doula Project before, and am honored to have been one of the founders.
All the credit for what the project has become goes to co-founders Mary and Lauren, who took some very early stage ideas about providing doula care to folks having abortions and turned it into this amazing project which supports people throughout all stages of reproductive life, including abortion, fetal anomalies, miscarriages, adoption and birth.
I think this project takes doula care to its natural end–we’re there to support pregnant folks, through any and all decisions.
The Doula Project has served over 500 pregnant people since the fall of 2008, guided by the mission of providing free compassionate care and emotional, physical and informational support to people facing birth, abortion, fetal anomaly, or miscarriage. The foundation of our project is built on meeting pregnant people where they are, something I’ve taken with me from working four years in the reproductive justice movement. This connects to our belief that pregnant people should be trusted to make the choices that are best for them and that their experiences and the memories of those experiences should be honored.
Doulas hold a unique position in health care as non-medical lay people who are there solely for the pregnant person. The birth doula movement has certainly grown over the past few years, and innovative and radical projects have expanded care for pregnant people who might otherwise not receive it, such as young mothers and women in prison. During this time, The Doula Project has been building on a new model of doula care: one that supports pregnant people having abortions and choosing adoption.
Read the whole article here and check out the Doula Project here.
UPDATE: There is another great article about the Doula Project in the Brooklyn Link.
A new video from the fabulous National Advocates for Pregnant Women, about the new crop of personhood bills that are popping up in states around the country and why they are bad for all pregnant women–whether you are terminating your pregnancy or not.
This is the type of legislation that birth advocates and abortion activists need to rally together and fight against, because they will limit all our choices–from abortions to home births. If we give fetus’ rights that compete with the mother’s, we’re all in danger.
RH Reality Check: What is the significance of Roe to you and to the women you serve?
Miriam Perez, Senior Advocacy Associate at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health:
For the women we work with, many of whom come from countries in Latin America where abortion is still criminalized, Roe has the potential to have a huge impact on their lives. Roe has the potential to make reproductive health services just like any other healthcare need a woman has, it has the potential to make a usually clandestine procedure safe and accessible. Unfortunately for them, the Roe decision has been weakened and diluted by subsequent legislation. The Hyde Amendment, in particular, has seriously stunted the potential of Roe. Because of these laws, we have a long way to go for low-income and immigrant women to really feel the full affects of this historic Supreme Court decision.
RH Reality Check: Is Roe enough? What does our country need in addition to Roe to ensure reproductive justice for all women?
Miriam Perez:
Roe isn’t enough because privacy is not enough. That narrow legal framework has only barely protected our legal right to access the procedure. It says nothing about access, about funding, about autonomy and barriers.It says nothing about justice. It has not addressed those who based on moral and religious convictions try to limit the health care women can receive. It has not addressed those who want women’s bodies to be manipulated in service of a religious agenda and who want the fetus’s rights to be placed about those of the mother. We need a lot more than a shaky legal framework to stand on if we want to achieve reproductive justice.
I’m really excited to be writing this post, announcing that NYC has a new abortion doula project. I’ve written about the idea of abortion doulas before (see theseold posts). Also I wrote an article for RHReality Check a year or so ago about some other abortion doula projects around the US.
Doula care is expanding across the United States as more people become familiar with the concept and more women seek out their services for labor and delivery. As this expansion continues as a part of the wider movement to change the standards of maternity care in the United States (by lowering intervention rates, increasing midwifery care and educating women about birthing options), there are doulas trying to apply their skills to another arena of women’s reproductive lifecycle: abortion care.
While I was living in New York City, I connected with two other doulas, Mary and Lauren, about the idea of starting an abortion doula project in NYC. I thought it could be a great way to provide this service (on a volunteer basis) to women receiving abortions in New York City, and also serve the political purpose of broadening the scope of doula care. We worked together on the foundations of this project up until I left NYC in February and I am happy to say that the project is almost up and running! They are going to be training a group of women in a few weeks and have begun providing support to women receiving abortions at Bellevue Hospital.
Stay tuned for more updates about the project, and a Radical Doula profile about Mary!
Interested in learning more about the project or getting involved? Email marymATprotectchoiceDOTorg.
I don’t know how many of you are keeping up with the political circus that is the last few weeks (it’s pretty hard to avoid) but I know I can’t really ignore it since I live in our nation’s capital, where everyone is obsessed with politics.
This Open Letter to Sarah Palin by Lynn Paltrow of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women was a refreshing bit of logic in the last few weeks of fury around this Republican VP candidate.
Your last pregnancy, the one that has become the topic of widespread discussion and speculation provides an important opportunity to demonstrate how this could be true.
According to press reports your water broke while you were giving a keynote speech in Texas at the Republican Governors’ Energy Conference. You did not immediately go to the hospital — instead you gave your speech and then waited at least 11 hours to get to a hospital. You evaluated the risks, made a choice, and were able to carry on your life without state interference. Texas Governor Rick Perry worried about your pregnancy but didn’t stop you from speaking or take you into custody to protect the rights of the fetus.
After Ayesha Madyun’s water broke, she went to the hospital where she hoped and planned to have a vaginal birth. When she didn’t give birth in a time-frame comfortable to her doctors, they argued that she should have a C-section. The doctors asserted that the fetus faced a 50-75 percent chance of infection if not delivered surgically. (Risks of infection are believed by some health care providers to increase with each hour after a woman’s water has broken and she hasn’t delivered).
The court, believing like you that fetuses have a right to life, said, “[a]ll that stood between the Madyun fetus and its independent existence, separate from its mother, was put simply, a doctor’s scalpel.” With that, the court granted the order and the scalpel sliced through Ms. Madyun’s flesh, the muscles of her abdominal wall, and her uterus. The core principle justifying an end to legal abortion in the U.S. provided the same grounds used to deprive this pregnant and laboring woman of her rights to due process, bodily integrity, and physical liberty. When the procedure was done, there was no evidence of infection.
According to the press reports, instead of going straight to a hospital you chose to get on a long airplane flight back to Alaska.
Paltrow goes on to make the important connection between anti-choice fetus rights activism and women’s ability to control how, when and by what means they give birth. Paltrow, as usual, is right on. Read the rest of the letter here.
While many of us spend a lot of time fighting against anti-abortion legislation, crazy lawmakers and their ballot initiatives, there is a whole other group of people pro-actively working to ensure women’s access to abortion–by providing them.
Last week I was at the National Coalition of Abortion Providers Conference (talking about abortion doulas) and Dr. Susan Wicklund spoke about her new book. Dr. Wicklund is an abortion provider living in Montana, and has written a touching memoir of her life as a provider. She lives in Bozeman, MT currently and wants to open up a new clinic (in an area with few options for women) but has run into a lot of hurdles. Building owners who won’t lease to her under pressure from anti-choice people mainly.
So to help Dr. Wicklund some of the attendees of the conference opened a paypal account in her name, to help her open her clinic (possibly by buying a building). Want to chip in? Email supportsuewicklund@gmail.com and ask for information about how to donate!
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About Me
Miriam Zoila Pérez is a writer, blogger and reproductive justice activist. She works with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and is an Editor at Feministing. Miriam was trained as a doula in 2004.
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