Radical Doula

I had the opportunity to connect with Monica when I was in Iowa last Spring during the Feministing College Tour. In short, she’s awesome. An amazing academic, activist and doula. I’m psyched she agreed to be part of the series!

This is a series highlighting folks who identify as Radical Doulas. Are you interested in being part of the series? Email me.

Monica Brasile has been a Certified Childbirth Educator and Doula since 1996, and is a founder and steering committee member of Friends of Iowa Midwives, a statewide grassroots organization working to increase access to midwifery care in Iowa. She is a PhD Candidate and Graduate Instructor in the department of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa, and has taught several courses on women’s health and activism, including Feminism and Social Change and Issues in Reproductive Justice. She lives in Iowa City with her partner and teenage son. Her website is www.mapleseedbirth.com.

RD: What inspired you to become a doula?

MB: When I gave birth to my son at home, I was 19 and single. The loving, respectful care I received from my midwife was a welcome respite from the highly charged atmosphere of welfare reform anxiety that surrounded young single moms in the early 1990s. For me, giving birth was a hugely transformative, empowering, and positive experience. That experience gave me a passion for helping others arrive on the other side of birth feeling confident, strong, and supported, rather than violated, afraid, and alone. I am a doula because I believe that all women deserve to be trusted, listened to, and cared for respectfully. I believe that all women deserve access to information and the opportunity to make informed choices about pregnancy, birth, and parenting.

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

MB: Because I believe that women should be the ones to decide what happens to their bodies, I work as a doula to help women to be at the center of the birth experience. I am committed to providing evidence-based, mother-friendly, non-judgmental birth services, with the belief that each birth is different and each family’s needs are unique. I believe that informed childbirth is an important facet of reproductive choice. By supporting women as a doula, I am supporting their reproductive autonomy. As a feminist, I see childbirth as an issue of reproductive and social justice, and I am interested in challenging ways in which birthing choices are often constrained by larger structural issues like poverty, racism, homophobia, access to health care, and the legal status of midwifery.

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This is a series highlighting folks who identify as Radical Doulas. Are you interested in being part of the series? Email me.

Stephanie Dank helps run the Harmony House, a medicinal herb cooperative in Lincoln, NE, working to build community around sustainable farming practices and healing holistically.  She is a full-time student, stay-at-home-mom, radical doula, and evolving herbalist, focusing much of her work in reclaiming the Wise Women Tradition of folk medicine and traditional midwifery/womancare.  She lives with a wild man she calls her partner, several hens, and a delightful, hilarious gift of a baby.  She likes to play the frame drum and take several deep breaths at a time.

What inspired you to become a doula?

When I started teaching workshops on positive menstruation I became a sort of agent for women to have access to all sorts of zines and alternative media about women’s health.  And so when I became pregnant, it was natural for me to seek out all of the empowering information out there about birth.  I soon found out that as easy as it was for me to find as somebody already tapped in, it wasn’t as accessible for most pregnant people.  I wanted to become a doula to help others have access to information that could empower their experiences.  Also, birth rights are extremely restricted here in Nebraska, so I want to help broaden the spectrum of options.  I had an doula-attended, drug-free hospital birth.  I’m proof that it can be done with the right support.

Why do you identify with the term radical doula?

Birth is a feminist issue, and it’s a radical feminist issue in that it often gets left out of the mainline feminist discussion, not to mention the reproductive rights debate.  I definitely see myself as an agent of change on the political front by working to empower women to be in control of their own experience.  There needs to be more birth workers out there that align themselves with some sort of intent, because the landscape of this work is in need of a lot of change.  There are doulas that stay neutral and accessible to people who are turned off by attaching ideology to their birth experience, and that’s totally fine.  My community doesn’t need another doula like that.  I’ve had to come to the decision to be out with my intent whether it works against me sometimes or not.

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