Kick-Ass Radical Doulas, 2nd Edition: Birth Companions Organisation

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Sound familiar? Similar to the BirthPartners (see my first edition of kick-ass radical doulas), another group in London is also providing support to women giving birth in prison. The organization, Birth Companions Organisation (BCO),

Birth Companions is a small charity providing practical and emotional support to women who face giving birth whilst in detention. Birth Companions provides trained and experienced birth supporters who support pregnant women in detention, during labour and after the birth of their babies. We work mainly in Holloway prison although we are now expanding to provide support in the community to pregnant asylum seekers/refugees who have been released from detention. We provide support to women who would not otherwise have anyone to accompany them during the birth of their baby. We also offer our support to women who are unsure whether their family or friend will be able to get to them in time to be with them during their labour.

So amazing and radical. Oh, and here’s more:

We do not discriminate against a mother in prison on grounds of race, culture, religious belief, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, any social or behavioural disability, or on grounds of any offence she has committed or is alleged to have committed.

This organization has supported over 200 women in the last nine years, and interestingly enough, a quarter of the women in prisons in London are foreigners. We need more groups like these.

Check out their website for more information.

Midwifery/doula news round-up

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Some great math to explain why homebirth midwives are more economically viable.

A synopsis of some of the changes in childbirth and parenting over the last few decades.

Limited birth options in San Francisco, where one woman’s insurance forces her to have a c-section.

Citypaper article about the potential crisis for maternity care in Philadelphia.

Video about doulas in Texas.

Cost of birth control skyrockets on college campuses due to a change in Medicaid law.

An exerpt on Huffington Post from Jessica Valenti’s (Feministing.com) new book, Full Frontal Feminism, where she talks about definitions of motherhood, including how women are being limited by increasing numbers of c-sections.

The #1 cause of death among pregnant women? MURDER

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An article in the newest issue of Mother Jones makes a great point:

And if the Supreme Court and abortion opponents really want to protect the lives of fetuses, they might consider this: Murder is the number one cause of death of pregnant women in the United States.

But of course we don’t really care about the women carrying the fetus, just the fetus itself. It’s frightening to think about the incidence of intimate partner violence and women as victims, the article also points out that one million women are stalked in the US every year. ONE MILLION women.

Another related crisis is the mass murder of women and girls in Guatemala. This is a human rights disaster, and its not being talked about. Women are being murdered simply because they are women.

Since 2001, more that 2,600 Guatemalan women and girls have been killed and the numbers seem to be accelerating – 110 were murdered in January and February this year alone. Only a negligible number of their killers has ever been convicted.

The scary thing about these murders? They are usually unprovoked. Similar issues have been documented on the US-Mexico border, as well as war-torn countries where rape is used as a weapon.

This weekend I finally saw the new Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, and what struck me about their Global Feminisms exhibit is how violence is such a pervasive theme. Many of the pieces used shocking imagery to represent the effect of war and national struggles on women’s bodies, including a video which showed a woman hula hooping with barbed wire. It was painful, disturbing and moving all at the same time.

It’s horrible that we have to waste our energy on five anti-choice men on the Supreme Court, when we have such big issues at hand. BTW, it’s National Call-In Day. Call your Congress people and tell them to support the Freedom of Choice Act.

Update: Subway Ticket Incident

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A month ago I posted a story about how I was given a ticket on the NYC subway. It was allegedly for taking up more than one seat (even though it was 2am on a Thursday). The whole incident was ridiculous, including what I would consider harrassment on the part of the officer involved.

Well yesterday I had the great fortune of going to the Transit Adjudication Board to contest the ticket. After two hours of waiting, I spoke to a very sympathetic woman who dismissed the ticket. Also, a colleague of mine who happens to be on NYC Transit Riders Council was outraged enough to bring the story to the chief of the council, who is talking to the Chief of Police about the incident. I’m just happy it’s all over.

Apparently women don’t have a sexual orientation

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A recent NY Times article argues that human sexual behavior is a long drama whose script is written quite substantially in the genes. Author Nicholas Wade explains how science has made it crystal clear that sexuality, and sexual preference, is completely determined by genetics.

He focuses on the brain–which, shockingly enough, is a full fledged sexual organ–and explains that the two sexes have profoundly different versions of it. Thanks for clearing that one up for us, now I get it, men and women have different brains! Forget feminism and arguments about equality—let’s just accept it boys and girls, god made you different!

Apparently scientists, theorists and feminists have been wrong all along, at least according to one doctor from UC Irvine. The most infuriating thing about this article is the author’s blaise and sexist tone, which implies that “Oh wow! Now the mystery is solved.” Not only does he argue that women don’t really have a sexual orientation (while male sexuality is determined before birth), he also argues that homosexuality in men can be attributed to the “fraternal birth order effect”—having older brothers.

He also quickly dismisses all arguments about social and cultural influences on sexuality.

The most direct evidence comes from a handful of cases, some of them circumcision accidents, in which boy babies have lost their penises and been reared as female. Despite every social inducement to the opposite, they grow up desiring women as partners, not men.

What?!? Circumcision accidents? There have got to be better ways to try and debunk the social constructionism myth than that one.

His conclusions seem based more on his own shaky opinion than any scientific fact, and he only occasionally cites a handful of studies or researchers. He makes no mention of the existence of bisexuality, intersex or transgender people in his arguments, who could all through a wrench in his neat theory.

More news about the ban

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Check out some of these articles/posts about the outrageous ban.

A bird and a bottle

NY Times

John Edwards

Lawyers, Guns and Money

Feministing

Als0, if you happen to be in Washington, DC, there is a rally at 3pm in front of the Supreme Court. Come. This is important.

Bush starts to work his magic…

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The Supreme Court just released it’s decision to uphold the Federal Abortion Ban of 2003–the first major abortion restriction since Roe vs. Wade. This is a HUGE deal and reflects how Bush’s conservative SC appointments are going to have an effect on women’s rights in the long term.

The ban includes NO exception for the life and health of the mother. And for those of you who are conspiracy theorists–the news of the tragedy at VA Tech will ensure that this news makes little noise.

More at SCOTUSblog

Pleasure&Pain

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Even though I am not currently practicing as a doula (due to the constraints of my full-time job), I recently was thrown back into the role of support person by my older brother’s appendicitis. It was incredible for me to see how similar my role with him was to my role with birthing women. The experience served to reinforce a few things for me:

1)    That all people, particularly when in the hospital setting and going through a medical procedure, deserve the support that someone like a doula can provide
2)    That hospitals and medical staff are not equipped/not able to provide this type of support to patients
3)    That I derive a lot of joy from serving in this capacity, and need to find a way to incorporate it into my life (in a sustainable way!)

My main experiences as a doula are from working in a public teaching hospital not too different from the one where my brother was—and it was amazing how the sites and smells just completely threw me back to those births. Particularly the smell of the soap served as a really strong memory trigger.

The other thing that I took away from this experience with my brother (who is doing quite well by the way!) is how important the role of pleasure can be in the treatment of sick people. Doctors and nurses mainly focus on the eradication of pain—primarily through the use of narcotics. This is a common critique of the treatment of birth, particularly because in childbirth pain can be an important indicator and way through which the body communicates. But when we are dealing with pain that is not really an indicator of anything (except maybe that someone cut your stomach open and sewed you back up), the focus becomes helping the patient to be as comfortable as possible. Naturally.

But in this focus on narcotics and pain eradication—an extremely effective technique can be forgotten—pleasure. Rather than focusing on making patients feel good—we focus on making them feel numb, feel nothing, feel no pain. I don’t know a lot about the physiology of pleasure and pain, but I know there are a lot of connections between the two, and sometimes quite a fine line between them. What I do know is that it is just as important to make sick people, and people in pain, feel good as it is to get rid of their pain. Doulas and midwives know this, and use it in their practice, employing massage, acupressure, and other techniques to make women in labor feel pleasure, which in turn mediates their pain, making it more tolerable.

Hospitals are strikingly devoid of these techniques, and patients are left to manage their pain through numbing narcotics. Other non-traditional practitioners employ these techniques (like massage therapists, acupuncturists, etc) but I think we need to bring it back into standard medical care.

Abortion Doulas

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This is such an amazing idea—I’m sad that I hadn’t thought of it first. While at the From Abortion Rights to Social Justice Conference, I spoke with two awesome women who are trying to start abortion doula programs. What is an abortion doula? The idea is that a doula could provide support to women having abortions—very similar to the support that she would provide to a woman in labor. Women who have abortions in this country (all one million of them a year) many times do so in very unsupportive environments. They may not be able to tell their family members, either out of fear that they won’t be supportive or simply because they are afraid. They may not have a partner, or they may be making the decision to end the pregnancy alone. Abortion clinics are also under a lot of stress and pressure because there are so few of them, and so many women who need their services. So why shouldn’t doulas, who are trained to support women during birth, be able to provide the same support to women terminating their pregnancies?

At the Abortion Speak Out that opened the conference, women who had had abortions shared their stories—and many of them talked about the women who held their hands during the procedures. Most of them didn’t even know this person’s name, but years later still remember how much their presence helped them get through experience.

How many of you doula’s out there are with me on this one? Anybody in NYC want to try and start this (or know if it’s already happening?)? It would be pretty simple—get matched up with a woman who is going to have an abortion, and if there is time, meet with her beforehand to talk about how she is feeling and what kind of support she wants. Then go with her, talking to her through it, and holding her hand. Stay with her during the recovery, and then meet with her later to talk more and see how she is doing. Kind of the same model we use for birth doulas, a prenatal visit and a postpartum visit. I’m ready to do this now, let’s get it started.