We’re up to 42 programs in 15 states, the District of Columbia and two international programs. Pretty incredible.

That means there are likely thousands of you out there volunteering your time to support folks through pregnancy and childbirth. Amazing.

If you know of a volunteer program that is missing from my list, just send me an email with links or details and I’ll add it.

The list is not an endorsement of any of the programs, just a resource for people looking to volunteer their time.

The Doula Project of New York City is a non-profit providing support to people across the spectrum of pregnancy. It is volunteer-run and all of its services are free of charge. Since 2008, its 50 trained abortion and birth doulas have provided services to over 5,000 people in the New York City area. I talked with Kathleen, who has been a doula with the Project since 2009 and a member of the Leadership Circle for the past year and a half.

To start-off, could you first describe a little about what an abortion doula is?

An abortion doula provides emotional, physical, and informational support to people choosing abortion. As part of the Doula Project, our doulas also support people facing miscarriage, stillbirth, and fetal anomaly and provide birth doula services to low-income people and to people choosing adoption. All in all, our mission is to offer care and compassion to pregnant people making a variety of choices regarding their pregnancy and/or birth.

What does a day’s work for an abortion doula look like?

Depending on the site, our doulas work with between four and 15 abortion clients per day.  When I work with an abortion client, I try to help her feel safe and at ease. Any medical procedure can be scary, but facing an abortion can be especially frightening for some because of the wealth of inaccurate information and the stigma surrounding the procedure. Before the abortion begins I try to help my client feel comfortable by answering her questions and chatting. I’m usually with her as she meets the doctor and the nursing staff.

Being awake during an abortion is very doable but is sometimes painful. During the procedure I may help her breathe through uncomfortable moments, explain what’s happening, squeeze her hand, stroke her forehead, and distract her with conversation about her favorite TV show or her weekend plans. Afterwards I help her get settled in the recovery room. I may give her a hot pack to place on her abdomen to help with cramps and put cool cloths on her forehead and back of her neck if she’s overheated. Some of my clients want to talk a lot in the recovery room, others are quieter. If my client is settled and seems to be feeling okay, I often sit quietly in a chair close by, ready to engage if and when she chooses.

Read the full interview over at Abortion Gang. And for more about my experiences as an abortion doula, check out my Abortion Doula Diaries series.

I know I’m biased, since I’ve been involved since the beginning, but I think the Doula Project is really rad.

First of all, it’s mission is pretty amazing: provide volunteer doula care to people across the spectrum of pregnancy: from abortions and miscarriages to adoptions and births. All of it is done at no cost to the pregnant person–it’s a volunteer operation that is now a 501-C3 (hence the fundraiser!).

I’ve chronicled some of my experiences working with the project in my Abortion Doula Diaries series. In short I think it’s pretty rad, and has helped spark a national movement of similar organizations around the country providing this type of comprehensive doula support.

Some official language from the project:

We are a volunteer led and run non-profit organization offering free doula care to women across the full spectrum of pregnancy options. The Doula Project works to connect the choices, needs, and experiences of people across this spectrum and to provide on-site support for our clients no matter what their choices may be. Since 2008, our 50 trained abortion and birth doulas have provided physical, emotional, and informational support to more than 5,000 women in New York City who have faced birth, abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth induction, and adoption.

5,000 people! That’s incredible.

If you’re feeling generous, your support would be appreciated. Funds will go to expanding services to serve more people, as well as further training and expansion of this really amazing model. Donate here.

About Exhale:

Exhale creates a social climate where each person’s unique experience with abortion is supported, respected, and free from stigma. Exhale provides services, training, and education to empower individuals, families, and communities to achieve post-abortion health and wellbeing.

In the article I talk about how I became a doula, how I made the connection to abortion work and why I started this blog.

My job as an activist – whether for abortion, reproductive justice or birth, is to make sure people have as many options as possible, and my job as a doula is to make sure they get the emotional support they need along the way. It was time to bring these two passions of mine together in a way that could improve the lives of pregnant women. I started a blog and started calling myself a radical doula.

I also interviewed a few doulas who have been involved with Exhale’s work.

There are a lot of assumptions about the personal experience of abortion, but what an abortion doula will tell you, though, is that no two people’s experiences are alike. Emotional responses vary widely. Laura shared,

“Being pregnant is significant, however a person a politically identifies or however she acknowledges the process. We’re not trying to be behind the politics of it. Her voice, her experience gets validated on her terms.”

Read the rest of the article here.

From the Chicago Doula Circle email announcement:

Dear Friends,

We are excited to announce that the Chicago Doula Circle is currently recruiting volunteers for our new hospital-based abortion doula program! We are looking for a diverse group of volunteers to provide direct-service support to people during their abortions here in Chicago. Volunteers are asked to commit to a two-day weekend training as well as two shifts per month and one monthly volunteer support meeting. For more information about our organization, abortion doulas, and to view the volunteer application, please visit chicagodoulacircle.com. A direct link to the volunteer application can be found at http://bit.ly/chicagoabortiondoula. To be considered for the 2011 training, all applications are due no later than October 31, 2011.Please spread the word! Thank you for supporting Chicago Doula Circle.

With excitement & gratitude,
Kate Palmer & Kristen Ethier, Co-Founders/Co-Directors

My running list of volunteer doula programs is here.

Details:

Founded in 2011, the Bay Area Doula Project is the first doula project offering ‘full-spectrum’ doula care in Northern California.  We are an emerging group of doulas in the Bay Area who are committed to supporting pregnant women who are choosing abortion, and other pregnancy outcomes.  Most of us are birth doulas, many of us are postpartum doulas as well.  All of us are abortion doulas.  We trust women to make their own decisions regarding their pregnancies, and offer unconditional support to women in need.

All the info about their project is on their website, including an application for doulas who want to join.

Congrats to the BADP!

Just three years ago, the idea of an “abortion doula” felt totally new and novel. Now we’re at a place where there is a true movement behind doulas who are providing this kind of support. It’s incredible.

From starting this blog almost four years ago because I felt alone in my work as a doula with my politics, to feeling the need to bring together all the amazing people involved in this work! It’s been an incredible journey.

The organizing of this gathering, meet-up of sorts, is still in its infancy. What we do know is that we want to bring together the folks who are doing this work, so that we can share strategies, struggles and build relationships with one another.

What we don’t know is how, when, where, what and why.

That’s where you come in! We’d love it if you’d take a few minutes to fill out this survey to let us know what you might like to see at a gathering like this.

Thanks in advance for your support, and I look forward to meeting many of you at the gathering.

But this was too good not to post! Erykah Badu, who has been a doula for years, is now training to become a midwife.

This is was the best part:

Badu, who provides all of her services for free, has since become a spokeswoman for the International Center for Traditional Childbearing and she is now aiming to get her professional certification so she can open birthing centres in inner cities in the future.

She reveals patients call her “Erykah Badoula” and insists “nothing gives me more pleasure” than assisting in anaesthesia-free births.

Erykah Badoula! Love it.

Via Toronto Sun

Ondaadiziike. The Ojibwe phrase for giving birth. When I was writing this article, I was hoping to combine ondaadiziike with the Ojibwe words for safety and comfort. I was surprised that the dictionaries I consulted didn’t include these words. So I was left with just ondaadiziike. No safety, no comfort to accompany it. This is reflective of modern birth culture in Native American communities, I think. Women (and girls) are giving birth without the accompaniment of safety and comfort. Modern day pre, ante, and post natal care for brown women in the United States is at times unsafe, and usually uncomfortable. Racism, sexism, poverty, and isolation have left women and their babies in desperate need for support, love, and compassion.

It wasn’t always this way. Native women were long respected as life givers. Our ancestors had mysterious, spirited reproductive powers. Women were forbidden to enter the dance arena during their moon time (a practice still respected in modern Powwow culture); not because they were viewed as dirty or hysterical, but because these women were so powerful during this time in the life cycle that they could take away power from anyone in the circle. So they stayed out in respect to their community members. Women took care of each other, Aunties, Grannies, Mothers, and Sisters. But women were also independent, knowledgeable, and assertive in their bodily rights. Reproductive culture varied from tribe to tribe but one thing was constant: women’s powers were sacred.

Enter Western patriarchy. Native women were subjected to horrors manifested in all aspects of bodily harm. Our ancestors were kidnapped, gang raped, and fed to war dogs. Eaten for entertainment in circus like manner. Forced to marry white men and birth babies alone, without the help of their beloved Sisters. Traditional knowledge of menstruation, pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding were lost, and Native women today still pay the price. Of all the ethnicities in the US, Native women suffer the most when it comes to birth. We have some of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, pre-term birth rates, maternal and neonatal morbidity rates, and some of the lowest breastfeeding rates. Reproduction in our community has become dangerous and unpredictable at worst, and casual at best as women forget just how powerful their bodies can be. Studies have proved that these racial disparities exist because of poverty and racism.

I’ve been inflicted with the pain of my sisters. I have dreamt about it and received pleas for help from the ancestors who visit me in my sleep. Doula care is going to be incredibly important in mending the disparities in pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding. I realize this. I need my sisters to realize this, too, and step up to fill that space along with me. We need Native women to become doulas, certified or not. We need a group of women to get together and create a resource for Native doulas and their families; a resource describing and honoring the traditions of our ancestors that includes a dictionary dedicated to Native birthing practices and care.

We need women to learn how to navigate and negotiate modern and traditional medicine and birthing ways with confidence, sensitivity, and power. We need women to come back to the communities they came from and offer their support to their Sisters. No woman should be without the knowledge of how to take care of her body in her life. No woman should suffer traumatic pregnancies and births.

I, and most of the abortion doulas I know, have started groups in our cities that then work on finding clinics to partner with as a team, offering to provide doula support to the clients the clinics serve.

The individual doula/client model that works for birth doesn’t really work in this context, especially since most folks wouldn’t think to reach out to a doula for an abortion or miscarriage. So instead we partner with clients directly, and set up volunteer shifts so that there is a doula for (ideally) every person they serve. To the people getting services at the clinic, we seem like clinic volunteers, even though really we’re an independent group partnering with the clinic or hospital practice.

Step one is to find a few other doulas in your community who are interested in this. Then, once you’ve established your group, you can work on reaching out to clinics like Planned Parenthood and others, to see if you can provide your doula services there. You’ll have to consider things like training on abortion doula support for your doulas, volunteer screening and other policies to comply with the clinic needs.

Don’t get discouraged if this takes a while! It can be a long process to build trust among the doulas, and trust with clinics. Some may at first not be interested in your services, but don’t get discouraged there either. Just keep trying until you find a provider who is interested. Others may come on board once they hear about the wonderful things your group is doing with other clinics.

Probably the best resource out there to help you with this is the Doula Project in NYC. They provide support, training and assistance to groups around the country trying to start similar projects in their cities.

More information is available here.

This was a question I received via email that I thought others might be curious about. Got other burning questions? Email me at radicaldoulaATgmailDOTcom.