doulaproject.org

Dear Helen,

While you were being born, I was your Mommy’s doula.  I wanted to write you this letter about your birth because it was so amazing.  The most wonderful part of your birth was the overpowering love everyone felt upon your arrival.  You are a lucky, lucky girl.

You were due to arrive on February 14^th, but it all started five days later, on Friday, February 19^th. Your Mommy went to see her midwife for a check-up.  Thankfully, the midwife said that you and your Mommy were both very healthy.  However, the midwife noticed that the fluid you were floating in was a little low.  This was a sign that it was definitely time for you to come!  The midwife told your Mommy to stay at the hospital so the doctors could help bring you into the world.  Around 3:00 in the afternoon, your Mommy called me to tell me all that was going on, and I got so excited!  I told her I was going to get ready and would be on my way to her soon.

Three years ago I became a doula. Early in my training, I became part of a conversation that focused on providing doula support for all of a pregnant person’s choices, including abortion. Since that time, I have served more than 100 pregnant people as part of The Doula Project in New York City. The project was founded on the idea that pregnancy is a spectrum and that as female-bodied people we may experience any and all of the possibilities that spectrum contains in a lifetime. Within that, we should also have access to doula care for each of our pregnancies.

{Read more at RH RealityCheck...}

Quietly working at a Manhattan hospital is a small group of women doing what even those who advocate for abortion might wince at: guiding women through late-term abortions.

In the midst of yet another round of abortion wars in Congress, the Doula Project operates in purposeful obscurity to support women who choose to have abortions, when they have abortions.

{Read more at The Brooklyn Ink...}

In 2008 I became an abortion doula in New York City. After I completed my doula training, I became incredibly apprehensive about my role during the procedure. I was worried that I would say the wrong thing, that I would be awkward, and that, as a college-educated, white genderqueer, I would not be able to relate to my clients at the clinic, who are mostly lower-income women of color and immigrants.