Art by Veronica Bayetti Flores

For the second year in a row I’ve had the pleasure of working with the Strong Families Initiative on their Mama’s Day campaign. The goal is to bring attention and love to the moms who are often marginalized by traditional mother’s day celebrations–young moms, queer moms, immigrant moms, moms of color, disabled moms.

Last year they created a music video, this year it’s a e-card generator. We worked with a group of fantastic artists who created the art for the cards, and you can add a custom message to send to a mama in your life–or simply spread a message via social media.

It’s also about bringing the politics back to a holiday that often gets commercialized and depoliticized. What do mother’s really need? How can we fight for a world that supports all moms? Mothers and parents are at the root of all our communities, and any agenda that ignores them risks a lot.

There are lots of lovely images to make cards with, including one for midwives:

I also wrote a post for the Strong Families blog about Bei Bei Shuai, who sadly is still in prison.

Another great mother’s day initiative is the one from the Prison Birth Project. They will send a card on your behalf to one of their incarcerated members, or anyone of your choosing, in exchange for a donation to their group.

Volunteer programs in NYC, DC and Chicago are all accepting applications for summer trainings.

More details after the jump!

DC Doulas for Choice Collective:

We are pleased to announce a call for applications for volunteers for an upcoming training to join the Collective. If you are interested in providing volunteer services to people having an abortion in the D.C./MD/VA area AND are available for a training June 9 & 10, 2012, we would love to hear from you.

The training will cost $20, which will cover the cost of supplies and breakfast. Participants will be asked to provide their own lunches. Please include a note in your application if this cost presents a financial hardship and we will work with you to ensure it does not create a barrier to participation.

If you CANNOT make the June training but are still interested in volunteering, still send us an email. There will be future opportunities to get trained. Contact us at (dcdoulasforchoice@gmail.com) to be sure you receive notice when we accept applications for subsequent trainings.

Full details here.

NYC Doula Project:

Mandatory doula training will take place the weekend of July 14^th and 15^th (9am-5pm). In order to offset some of the cost of the training workshops, we will be asking each applicant accepted to the Doula Project to pay $25 on the first day of training.  We recognize that this may be difficult for some of us; if this is the case for you, please just drop us a line.  We will waive the workshop fee, no questions asked.

People with experience in doula work, reproductive health, rights and justice
work, abortion counseling or health services are encouraged to apply. People of color, queer and trans people and Spanish speakers are strongly desired. People with flexible/free weekdays are ideal.  While we are willing to negotiate for the right person, priority will be given to those who can commit to at least two weekdays a month.

If you are interested in working with us, we are accepting applications now through May 14th. Please send completed applications to apply@doulaproject.org.

Full details here.

Chicago Doula Circle:

We are excited to announce that the Chicago Doula Circle is currently recruiting volunteers for our hospital-based abortion doula program and will be holding our summer training session in June! We are looking for a diverse group of volunteers to provide direct-service support to people during their abortions in Chicago. Volunteers are asked to commit to a one day training as well as two shifts per month (shifts are available Monday-Thursday, 3:00 pm-6:00 pm) 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.

University of Illinois at Chicago

Thursday April 26th, 2pm-3:30pm

Here I’ll be talking about my doula work! I don’t often get to focus on that, so it will be a fun conversation. Some of the members of the local abortion doula group in Chicago will be there as well, so you can connect with them and opportunities to join their initiative.

Details here.

TEDx DePaul University

Saturday April 28th, 9am-5pm

Here I will be giving a talk called “Transforming Empathy,” focusing on three lessons my work as a doula has taught me about social change. I’m excited to have the opportunity to join the TEDx platform, and hopefully talk about my work in a way that reaches a broader audience.

Details here.

Northwestern University

Monday April 30th, 6pm

Here I’ll be giving my “Sexual Assault and Social Justice” talk, as a concluding event for Northwestern University’s Sexual Assault Activism Month. You can see an excerpt of this talk here.

Details here.

If you’re interested in bringing me to speak at your campus or community, I’m now planning events for the fall 2012 and spring 2013. Get in touch.

Meanwhile, all of you amazing people have supported the fundraiser, and I reached my goal just halfway through the fundraiser! THANK YOU to everyone who has donated so far. I feel so loved and supported.

Although the donation price to pre-order a copy of the guide was $35, once it’s printed and the pre-orders are out the door, I’ll be selling it for around $10. So no fear if you haven’t donated, or can’t afford the $35. The fundraiser was a way to get support from those who could offer it, so that I could then sell the guide at a fraction of the cost of printing and design. Check back here in May for info about ordering the guide at the lower price.

There are still 9 days left to participate in the fundraiser, however, and I of course welcome the additional support! Any money that comes in above the cost of making the guide will go to offering copies of the guide to those who can’t afford even the $10 price.

As a thank you to everyone for supporting the fundraiser, I’m including an excerpt from the working introduction to the guide. It’s still in draft form, but after the jump is the section entitled “Why this guide?”

Also, apologies for not blogging more during these weeks, and to anyone who has emailed me and not received a response. I promise, I have not forgotten you! I will respond as soon as I can.

Why this guide?

When I began my doula journey over seven years ago, I knew very little about the world of childbirth. I had seen a documentary in a college class, Born in the USA, that opened my eyes to just how wrong our system of maternity care is. But my knowledge basically stopped there. I had worked with immigrant women, I had organized as part of the feminist and reproductive rights groups on my campus, so my politics went further. But the relationship between those politics and my future as a birth worker were extremely unclear.

My doula training was an amazing experience. I spent the weekend with an incredible group of women, learning about this amazing role of the doula. I remember the following Monday feeling simply alive with all that I had learned and with the experience of just being in a room with them for a few days. But as I began actually doing my doula work, I realized just how limited my training had been. I remember my trainer explaining in the context of the role of a doula, that a doula is not a translator. While I understood that philosophy in theory, in practice, as a spanish-speaking doula in a hospital setting where interpreters are only brought in (or, more often, pulled up on the phone) when there is paperwork to be signed, that advice did not serve me. This is just one example of where my training fell short.

As doula care becomes more popularized and more mainstream, the scope of our trainings get further and further specialized. The process when I began it five years ago was already bureaucratic and it has become more so as the time has passed. There are now separate trainings for birth doulas and postpartum doulas. Groups like The Doula Project have their own training for abortion doula care. Other groups that specialize in providing care to women who are incarcerated have their own trainings as well. It’s incredible that such a wealth of knowledge has been built around this role of the doula, but it means that new doulas often feel overwhelmed by the breadth of what there is to know, and unprepared by just a birth doula training.

There are also topics that are not part of the big doula organization’s curricula, but that are crucial components for many doulas. The expertise shared here has been compiled during my seven years as a doula, but in particular during that time managing the blog Radical Doula. I began the blog in 2007 as a way to finally make the connections between my politics and childbirth—connections that some told me were unusual. I wanted to talk about why I was pro-choice and a birth doula, why I was queer and gender non-conforming and a birth doula, why I was Latina and the child of immigrants and a doula. I wanted to document the ways in which all of these political perspectives actually went together and complimented one another. This is how Radical Doula came to be.

In the years since starting the blog, I’ve gotten hundreds of emails from new doulas, would-be doulas, people interested in becoming a doula. The answers to many of their questions are contained in this guide. I envision this guide not as a replacement to a doula training, to apprenticeship, to further reading and study into the art and practice of doula care. Instead this guide is a complement, a starting point, a resource for thinking about the many issues that interact with and surround our work as doulas. Many of these issues aren’t talked about in doula trainings and doula conferences, yet they are absolutely crucial to our work.

Excerpt from The Radical Doula Guide, forthcoming 

I’m struck these days by just how political this whole business of reproduction is. It’s always been this way, but this is the first time in my short political memory that it has been so wholly the focus of political attention. How many hours, how many millions of dollars have gone into this project? This nasty project of turning bodies into politics and health into controversy.

In my post from yesterday I talked about how no person should be criminalized for failing to guarantee a healthy pregnancy outcome. When I say “criminalized” I don’t just mean going to jail, I also mean subjected to demeaning and non-medically based practices and procedures. What are these rules if not punishment?

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the decision that gave single women access to contraception. Maybe when we realize that it was only 40 years ago that we gained the right to control our fertility regardless of marital status, we’ll understand why we’re fighting these battles today.

I know we all work on many important issues, but this one is really important, and deserves five minutes of your time and attention.

Bei Bei Shuai.

While the details of her case are super important, the reason this deserves your attention right now is that these cases set a really dangerous precedent of punishing women who fail to guarantee a healthy pregnancy outcome. (h/t to Lynn Paltrow)

Now as birth activists we know how dangerous this is, and how it can (and is) being used against women who try to refuse c-sections and other maternity related care. NO ONE can guarantee a healthy pregnancy outcome. It’s impossible. This is about fighting for autonomy in health care, and to prevent the state from criminalizing pregnant women.

Here is Bei Bei’s story:

In 2010, Bei Bei Shuai, a pregnant woman living in Indiana became so depressed that she attempted to end her own life. With help from friends who intervened, however, she survived. Although Ms. Shuai did everything she could, including undergoing cesarean surgery, to ensure that her baby survived, her newborn died shortly after birth.

Ms. Shuai was arrested for the crime of murder (defined to include viable fetuses) and feticide (defined to include ending a human pregnancy at any stage). The sentence for murder can be the death penalty or 45 years-to-life. The sentence for attempted feticide is up to 20 years. Both of these kinds of laws are promoted and supported by “pro-life” organizations.

Bei Bei’s own mental health struggles add another layer of questions of disability rights to this case.

Criminalizing pregnant women does nothing but harm. Bei Bei should not be in prison. No pregnant woman should go to prison because of the outcome of her pregnancy. Ever.

Sign this petition in support of Bei Bei. This is seriously scary shit people.

Via National Advocates for Pregnant Women

Well here is an amazing alternative that shows what a true educational tool that provides resources looks like, the California Pregnant and Parenting Youth Guide.

Awesome! The guide is online and available in downloadable form. It’s in Spanish and English. It talks about options for pregnant teens (like abortion and adoption) without any of the scary shaming stuff about how if you choose to have a child it will end up in prison because you are a teen. It talks about resources, insurance programs, how crisis pregnancy centers are anti-choice. It talks about immigration! It’s written at a level teens can understand. It talks about legal rights for teens and parents, issues with custody, tips for parenting. There are cartoons!

Okay, obviously I’m super psyched about this. Cause I am. This is what all teens need. Keep your stigma, and provide resources instead.

The only criticism I can provide is that they don’t talk about birth options in terms of doulas or midwives. But otherwise? Incredible.

You can view the guide and download it here.

The Miami-based group Mobile Midwife did a lot of advocacy to get the bill through all it’s phases of votes and committees, and the co-director Jamarah Abdullah Amani has a piece in the Huffington Post about the practice of shackling:

As a Black woman, this both infuriates and saddens me. As a midwife, health educator and mother of three, I have given birth, as well as helped many families welcome their babies into loving arms. It baffles me that we, as a society, allow the horrific practice of shackling to continue without more outrage. Anyone who has had a baby, or has been a witness to the experience, knows that in labor and birth, we must walk through the fire of who we are to become who we will be as mothers and parents. This journey is challenging and fulfilling, scary and exhilarating. It means different things to different families, but what it should not signify is torture and humiliation.

Although the passage of this bill in Florida was a definite win, the fight continues in the rest of the states where no such bans exist:

As we, birth activists, kept late nights and early mornings working on this bill from Miami, Fl, a colleague who is also one of my dearest friends, Paris Hatcher, Executive Director of SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW, was working on a similar bill in Atlanta, Ga. It became kind of a race between the two of us to see which of our states could secure this basic human right for women first. Of course, we had hoped that both of our bills would pass this session.

Florida’s bill is now set to become law this week, while Georgia’s bill is still struggling to get out of committee. “We are excited about this victory in Florida and the potential this action means for Georgia,” states Hatcher. “But what is truly exciting is building a regional movement for Reproductive Justice based on principles of relationship building and amplifying the voices of those who are often forgotten in public policy.”

Although it’s unfortunate that it takes such a horrific practice to get positive support for a birth and reproductive justice issue, I’m beyond delighted to have wins to celebrate in today’s political climate.

About Lyssa: Lyssa Kaehler (CD)DONA has been assisting at births since 2010.  She has awesome tattoos and an irreverent sense of humor, and can help you make it through your birth with your soul and perineum intact.  In her spare time she enjoys making faces at babies and doing fix-it work around her house.

RD: What inspired you to become a Doula?

LK: I felt a calling to work with birth while I was in school studying psychology…funny how callings hit while you’re busy doing something else! It just felt like this was the life I was meant to be living. My eventual goal is to be a homebirth midwife, but some birth community friends advised that I become a doula first and get some real life experience before diving into midwifery school.

RD: What is your Doula philosophy and how does it fit into your broader political beliefs?

LK: I feel like all women deserve to be treated with respect and to have their body’s processes honored at whatever phase of life she is in or what she chooses to do with it…but that’s not what happens here. What I want for all the women that I work with is to feel that they were truly informed and in control of decisions made, and comfortable with the unfolding process even when things don’t go as planned. I hate that having a good, empowering birth is an upper class privilege in our medical system, and that poor women are just supposed to take whatever they are given and be grateful. That needs to change.

RD: What is your favorite thing about being a Doula?

LK: I love seeing women conquer their fears and the rush of power that comes with a good birth. A friend of mine was telling me yesterday that she is still empowered from the birth of her first child 22 years ago. That empowerment can change lives forever.

RD: If you could change one thing about birth in the US, what would it be?

LK: Universal health care would be nice, and a system that doesn’t encourage and reward providers for doing unnecessary inductions and c-sections.

Finally I can talk about this project, which has been in the works for what feels like years!

I decided that since it’s been five years of running this blog, I’m ready to take my work to the next level. Enter: The Radical Doula Guide.

I’ve been working on this guide for a few months now. It’s meant to be a resource for new doulas, would-be doulas, and pretty much anyone interested who wants to learn more about the political context of doula work. It’s going to be awesome, and I’m hoping it will help enrich this amazing community of doulas that is growing everyday.

Doulas can really make a difference–but only if our work connects to a broader movement for social justice.

I’ve just launched a fundraiser for the guide on Indiegogo as a way to get the resources I need to finish it. I’ve got a solid draft, a really amazing designer, and now all I need is the funding.

The guide isn’t going to be a rehashing of this blog in booklet form–it’s entirely new content, meant as a starting point for doulas who care about social justice and want to understand how their work fits in.

It feels really big to me–this is the first time I’ve invested so much energy into a Radical Doula related project, and it’s the first time I’ve ever tried to raise money for one of my projects. This blog has been a labor of love for five years, and now I’m hoping to take it offline and into the world, with your help.

You’re going to be hearing more about this in the coming weeks and months, but for starters, please check out my fundraising page and if you can, donate! I’ve got some good perks for donating, including radical doula buttons and copies of the guide. Your support means so much.

Also: Transcript for the video available here.