Yes! No longer do pregnant moms have to make do with the services of ordinary doulas—women who assist them during or after the birth of a child and who aren’t midwives.
No! This is the twenty-first century, and now women—in New York City—have a brand new service available to them: the abortion doula.
These service-providers hang out on a web site called DoulaProject.Org, where they blog about their services and experiences. They have an e-mail list and a Facebook fan page, and their suggested reading section includes titles like, “The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden Story of the Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade.”
Imagine that! It’s so much better now that we have Roe v. Wade and mothers can simply terminate their children rather than having to surrender them to adoption.
But let’s meet some of the abortion doulas themselves, shall we?
First, there’s E. Kale Edmiston, who describes herself as “a college-educated, white genderqueer,” who works as “a research scientist” and who is “a reproductive justice organizer.” She’s committed to her work as an abortion doula, as she has to take the train from her home in New Haven, Connecticut to her abortion gig in New York City. She says that she became “pro-choice because I grew up in the rural Midwest and saw how abstinence only education, coupled with limited access to abortion, exacerbated class disparities in my hometown.”
When she first became an abortion doula, she worried that she might not be able to relate to her clients, “who are mostly lower-income women of color and immigrants,” but fortunately . . .
What I found after my first few shifts of work was that I had worried way too much about saying the right thing. With most of my clients, I barely speak at all. In the waiting room, I sit next to her as I hold her hand. During the procedure, I try to be a solid presence- I plant my feet squarely next to the table and I face her; I try to make our dynamic her focus- whether its letting her squeeze my hand or looking her in the eye with absolute confidence that she is going to be ok. Afterward, we mostly sit in silence together, only really speaking if I sense that she wants to talk. This is a huge departure from my normal way of being in the world. I live mostly in my head; I over-think everything; my 9-5 job is working as a research scientist. Being an abortion doula is my one much-needed chance to be embodied emotion with another person.
Another abortion doula is “Lauren Mitchell, a petite redhead from Williamsburg” who is one of the founders of the Doula Project and who, according to the Meet the Doulas page on their site, “firmly believes in the inherent interdisciplinary connections that appear in the context of the body and throughout the spectrum of pregnancy.” She also is evidently a firmly-committed believer in the singular efficacy of bafflegab. Her bio notes, “When she’s not thinking about women’s health (which is rare), she writes. Her work can be found under the pseudonym L.A. Mitchell,” but the bio quickly qualifies this by saying, “(please note, she is not the L.A. Mitchell who writes sci-fi Christian romance novels).”
Whew! I am so relieved to hear that. (Not that I read sci-fi Christian romance novels, mind you.)
Another founder of the project is . . .
Miriam Perez, 25, an editor at Feministing and author of the blog Radical Doula, found that some people like herself felt isolated in their doula communities because they were queer, pro-choice or uninterested in making a full-time career of doula work. For Perez, it was also an issue of reconciling her reproductive rights work with being a doula.
And so the Doula Project was imagined when Perez met the Mitchell and the project’s co-founder, Mary Mahoney, at a meeting of The New York Birth Coalition in 2007. The idea of installing a doula unit at a local hospital or clinic became a passion project that Mitchell and Mahoney eventually carried to fruition (Perez had relocated to Washington, D.C.). And it continues to grow. Besides the partnership with the Manhattan hospital, the project appoints abortion doulas on an individual basis to women undergoing abortions at other hospitals and adoption doulas to Spence Chapin Adoption Agency. It’s also set to open a chapter in Atlanta.
There are 20 active abortion doulas in New York, mostly women under 30, and they work in shifts on a volunteer basis, serving up to 25 patients a week. To become doulas, they must complete 20 hours of clinical training, but the bulk of the job is intuitive — being present with the patient before and after the abortion, responding to her cues and providing necessary support. The intimacy of the experience can be wrenching. “What you get very used to is this weird mix of tragedy and relief and sex and death — this wild variety of emotions,” Mitchell says. “There’s always this interesting mix of remorse and relief.”
Not everybody is cut out to be an abortion doula, of course.
“A lot of people are interested in this politically, but don’t have the warmth,” Mitchell says. “You need more than just your conviction to do this.”
So it’s not enough, you see, to want to assist in homicide out of a sense of sheer ideological driven-ness. You have to have a human touch, too. Got it?
Elsewhere co-founder Mary Mahoney writes:
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.
Presumably, most of the “pregnant persons” that Mahoney works with are also “female-bodied people” Probably most of them aren’t “genderqueer.” But such is the life of a “reproductive justice organizer.”
It’s interesting in how Sin-As-An-Ideology (as opposed to a weakness) causes language to be warped as a way of masking the hideous distortions it introduces.
File this one under Dr. Frankenstein’s Medicine Show.
Your thoughts on this amazing new service?
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I guess having such a doula makes it easier to share the anguish of choosing death over life - a partner in crime.
From another story, I was reading the following:
“In one instance, Mitchell was with a woman undergoing a late-term procedure in which the woman’s fetus was given a shot of KCL, the same substance used in lethal injections. The woman, lying on a medical bed with her hands behind her head because her bottom half had to be kept sterile, could either look left and see an array of syringes or right and see the ultrasound monitor with her dead fetus on it. Mitchell, standing in the space behind the woman’s head, had met her only moments before. The woman turned her head and buried her face in Mitchell’s arms.”
That is hellish and tragic. :(
Evil always wears the mask of good.
“It’s interesting in how Sin-As-An-Ideology (as opposed to a weakness) causes language to be warped as a way of masking the hideous distortions it introduces.”
Is it the sin that leads to the language/ideology or the other way about? We’ve now had two generations raised on a vocabulary of “reproductive rights”, “choice”, “mass of cells”, &c that makes them nearly thruth-proof when it comes to the reality of abortion.
Replying to Thomas:
Sin creates the need for the new twists on words. And words are what is fed to the new generations who do not know it is a sin. If it’s only a one way road, it will not sustain it’s cycle. However, the source that starts this cycle is sin itself.
Oh no! How shocking! God forbid that a woman making a decision that you people don’t agree with have a bit of comfort and support from a stranger! Who would Jesus love? Nobody getting an abortion, that’s for sure!
Female-bodied persons? Oh Lord have mercy.
BTW, (that was Suzanne not Steve)
This is sad beyond words.
I am a huge supporter of doulas as a means to give birth. I strongly suspect there are a lot of doulas pretty horrified by this take on their “word.”
In reply to Anna - Jesus loves them ALL THREE of them - is the baby nonexistent?
@Anna,
Human emotional responses being what they are, it’s difficult to not let condemnation and lack of charity for people like these Abortion Doulas creep into our comments here, so we are duly taken to task by your words. Because of course (as you point out, even if sarcastically) Jesus created and loves even the person who helps other women abort their children. He also tells us to rebuke sinners so that they cannot be ignorant of their sins.
The problem isn’t that someone would provide comfort and support to another woman who is in the midst of agony over choosing to have an abortion. But there is a very important distinction between the options people choose: there are several well-known counseling services available, both from Catholic Charities in most/all cities as well as the outstanding Project Rachel (google it). These programs help women before or even after they choose to abort their children. These programs offer real healing by acknowledging exactly what you sarcastically pointing out - that Jesus loves sinners and saints equally and desires them all to come to Him. Programs like these abortion doulas serve only to superficially mollify the deep-seated wounds that women that have abortions experience, and worse still, enable and facilitate the immediate ease of going through with abortions, and I haven’t read much about their post-abortion services other than escorting women back out of the clinics.
These things are why the above stories are tragic.
So if there are female-bodied persons, and male-bodied persons, what is an able-bodied person? Oh, I know:
Gender-queer!
Ugh.
“Lack of charity”? Abortion is lack of charity! “To rebuke sinners so that they cannot be ignorant of their sins” you do not “provide comfort and support to another woman who is in the midst of agony over choosing to have an abortion”. How can you rebuke and give comfort? Like, ‘hey what you’re doing is not right, but go ahead and don’t feel guilty about it’ - of course not! To rebuke means to make them feel uncomfortable about doing the wrong thing so they won’t persist! Now that’s true charity! My, what language distortion! No wonder we have global warming alarmist - they distort data for their agenda.
Barna Research Group: “We are witnessing the development and acceptance of a new moral code in America….The moral code began to disintegrate when the generation before them - the Baby Busters - pushed the limits that had been challenged by their parents - the Baby Boomers. The result is that without much fanfare or visible leadership, the U.S. has created a moral system based on convenience, feelings, and selfishness.”
@Gabriele Torre,
I think maybe I didn’t make myself clear or your misread my comment. I was trying to point out that these “abortion doulas” are very short-sighted, misguided and superficial in the ‘support’ they claim to offer, whereas things like Project Rachel provide real support and help and witness to Christ’s love. Furthermore, I’m a very strong opponent of abortion in all cases without exception.
So yes, abortion is a terrible thing and no matter what, involves the killing of an innocent. My comment about lacking charity was that, in heated debates like those concerning abortion, it’s very easy to get carried away and act uncharitably towards both the woman who gets an abortion as well as towards the doctors and other people who are complicit in the abortion… but even so, they still demand our love and prayers on the most basic level as a human being (ie, not insulting them, but exposing what they are doing as horrifyingly sinful).
Maybe you were just not separating your thoughts into paragraphs, but I certainly don’t think you can point to what I’m trying to say I’m using language distortion for some terrible agenda like supporting abortion or being a global warming alarmist(?).
***the last line above in my post should read “...but I certainly don’t think you can point to what I’m trying to say as an example of using language distortion for some terrible agenda…”
I don’t understand how anyone can disagree with people who make an effort to share support and love when it’s needed. That you all do because you claim everyone should believe what you believe… it’s sad.
Said gently: the existence of your outrage does not set the conditions for abortion to cease. It helps nothing. Like all issues of sexuality, abortion (as well as all the other sexuality-related issues that religion would have us punish others for) is not going to go away. We can only make our own individual stands. Beyond that, the only choice laid out in front of us is how we respond by either demonizing women, or by helping them to heal.
The angst and pain and sadness that can accompany all those naturally occurring traumas of humanity can only be met successfully with love.
As someone in training/educating myself to be a doula, I think this is a FANTASTIC service. Pregnant women can use emotional and personal support regardless of their choices in pregnancy. Women who choose birth are no better than women who choose abortion, and both can use a doula’s services. These abortion doulas are amazingly strong, to be able to provide a service which should not be controversial but unfortunately is. I hope I can learn something from them to take into my services!
And Chris: please know that I offer this to you without any attachment to changing anyone’s mind. As the mother of a child who died, and as someone who runs a community to help embrace and support bereaved parents, I’d just like to ask you to think beyond absolutes.
There are women in my company who would have died had it not been for their utterly heartbreaking, traumatic medically-necessary termination of pregnancy. They grieve as intensely as the rest of us do - those who suffered stillbirth, or neonatal death in an NICU as I witnessed for my son. They had no choice. No choice.
I have to make the assumption that you’ve not had intimacy with this kind of trauma, and I’m glad for it. Experiencing the death of a baby only makes you more empathetic, more connected to the suffering of other human beings, more supportive. More respectful of all that we don’t know.
It’s only people who don’t know the sheer vastness of all that they don’t know who prescribe absolutes. I don’t ever want to be that person. Respectfully, that’s the definition of arrogance. Having been through what I went through, I never will be this way again. I do not judge. I listen, and I make whatever light I can for others. That’s a legacy given to me by the honour of having known my son.
DoulaToBe, if there is no difference between choosing birth and choosing abortion, then is there no difference between life and death? And if there is no difference between life and death, then why bother being a doula in the first place? Why bother doing anything at all? There would be no point to doing anything other than lying down and waiting to die.
@SweetSaltyKate
“They had no choice. No choice.”
Really? Are you sure? Like this woman?
http://www.saintgianna.org/main.htm
No end justifies evil means. And abortion is always a tragedy for all involved. Yep—those are a couple of absolutes—sorry if the truth makes me “arrogant.” God has enough love for all the victims of abortion—the moms, dads, babies, providers, and these poor misguided “abortion doulas” who are trying to bring comfort where it is so greatly needed.
There’s nothing in the abortiion industry that should suprise anyone.Isn’t it all about money?
Anna I will pray for you.
Mom of 5: Yes. I’m sure.
As for arrogance, it is defined by the presumption that your truth is the only truth.
Yuck! Simply revolting.
Kate—I truly wasn’t trying to be rude. Just wanted to share the info about St. Gianna, whose story helped me understand that a mother would, really, die for her child in the womb. I imagine that you and I would very much agree about that.
And as for definitions…here’s what I come up with for arrogance: “offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride”
And regarding truth: of course you must realize that by definition, truth cannot be subjective.
I find truth on this subject in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states: “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.” (No. 2271).
Here’s a quote from an interview I did with Mother Agnes Mary Donovan, Superior General of the Sisters of Life, about how they encourage the women who contact them to choose life: “We’ve found that the simple alchemy of love – loving those that come to us one heart at a time – that is what changes them…(Some) that come to us tell us they are pro-choice; that’s no issue to us. Oftentimes as they’re with us…and we’ve loved them, something will emerge where they’ll say ‘I could never think that again.’…What we see is abortion and those kinds of decisions are fueled by fear. St. John says, ‘Perfect love casts out fear.’ When one is supported and surrounded by love, they see the world and themselves differently.”
I’m horrified and speechless. How many women I know turn to doulas during pregnancy thinking they will get the support they need through delivery. One even said she was sure that all doulas were pro-life and therefore did not worry that the doula she chose would go against her if any problem arose during delivery. Evil seems to be spreading faster than ever before and it seems without opposition.
It seems that these “doulas” really believe that they are helping women. How sad for them. What will it feel like when it finally sinks in that they have been witnessing murder? I wish they would divert their efforts and really try the bravery of being vocally pro-life in this society.
Does the fetus get a Doula?
Dear sweetandsalty Kate,
In response to your March 2, 11:49 posting. “Experiencing the death of a baby only makes you more empathetic, more connected to the suffering of others…” You see an important kernel of truth but you’ve missed the plant that it was grown on.
Every abortion, for whatever reason, IS the death of a baby! Where we agree must be in the fact that in most cases the mother seeking an abortion does not actually “experience the death of a baby” as you so painfully did in the NICU.
Our world tries to isolates people from all things “undesirable”. I can’t live with pain, take a pill, I’m too nervous or anxious, pill pill. My skin is wrinkled, teeth are yellow, not straight enough, breasts are too small or too big. We’ve taken the same approach to the only creative process we are privileged to partake in, that being human life.
Once in a great while a pregnancy will threaten the life of a mom. Thirteen years working in an ICU and I’ve seen it only a few times, and these weren’t the moms who were going to give up, they wanted their babies and they suffered the way that you speak of. God bless you for your kindness to them Kate.
A final point on lessons learned from life’s experience; ‘What great truth is learned from the death of a child through abortion when the greatest predictor of having an abortion is having had a previous abortion?’ Does that tell you the same thing it tells me?
Adoptive parents. Praying for the babies everyday.
God bless.
“The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”
- G.K. Chesterton, “Orthodoxy”
Wow these women are truly “doulas” or “female salves” to death. What horrors!
I had an abortion 40 years ago and I wish I had had a Doula to support me at the time. I am now a Doula and see the need for such caring support. This is a long time in coming and I am glad for the women who we can now help. Now, I know one of my callings in life; the right to choose.
This is a great reason why we need more pro-life women to step up and become labor assistants. Being a doula is about helping a women have the best birth possible. We have enough problems with the c-section rates and over medicated births in this country, which is what doulas and midwifery care is all about LOWERING. “Inducing” labor for a death of a child goes against the very reason to become a doula at all!! I am a holistic mom, breastfeeding activist, baby wearer, lover of Jesus and doula in training. My whole life is about nurturing. Ripping, burning and killing a baby in utero is never nurturing to the baby OR the mother! Women deserve better than this!!!!
I am a Christian Birth Doula and am just hearing about Abortion Doulas. Honestly, I’m not sure what to think. Let me tell you why…...
I have always been pro-life, have never had an abortion, but I know several people who have and have seen their suffering afterwards. I believe that abortion has become a business and the biggest obstacle is there are too many people benefiting from it as a business right now for it to change.
On the other hand, I am driven to be an abortion doula because I know what these women are going through. I know that they are being rushed through a 10-15 minute procedure that will change their lives forever, and they are expected not to feel anything afterwards- or be thought of as wrong if they do. I would like to be there, not to tell these women that what they are doing is right, but to be there with them and LOVE them, which is what we are called to do.
And yes, don’t get me wrong, I would love to take each woman by the hand, lead her out of there, and tell her we will make it okay, which coincidentally is what I’d like to do when a mother opts for an induction or c-section! But also similarly, it is not my choice to make, and I never do. So that is kind of how I view abortion- it is choice- most often a very poor choice- but the most I can do is give information, and then support the woman’s choice, despite what it is.
Erica, I am so with you on the importance of loving women who are considering the tragedy of abortion. These women are victims of desperate, sad circumstances, a vicious, aggressive abortion industry, and a toxic culture that has been telling them for a generation now that abortion is a valid choice.
But the “choice” to abort one’s child is hardly comparable to an induction or a c-section! The intention of these latter two delivery methods is a safe childbirth for both mother and baby; the intention of an abortion is safe for neither—especially not for the baby.
Post-abortive women need lots of love and support—that’s what programs such as Project Rachel are intended to address—but we can’t compromise on this grave, life-or-death matter. We are called to show love, but to teach the *truth* in love—never to support evil. Abortion is certainly always evil and wrong, with no exceptions.
Wow. As a new birth doula just starting out, I had no idea abortion doulas existed. Thanks for bringing light to this issue.
I will start researching how I am be an abortion doula to the women in my community. Thanks again for taking an interest in women’s healthy.
*health
*can be
The devil is messing with my fingers! Must be because I support abortion.
As a Christian (pro-life) doula I would like to point out that I have never heard of this (and I’m from NY!) please don’t paint a dark picture of us, there are many of us that are there that watch a birth and are in awe of how are Creator made the female body to work for her. We exist because we want to see a healthy mother and baby.
Unbelievable! As a Labor Doula and Birth Educator, I am appalled at the CLEAR contradiction of ABORTION Doula! As a pro-mama, pro-baby Catholic Labor doula, I am called to support mama and baby. Our goal is to have positive outcomes for mama AND baby during birth (both cesarean and vaginal).
My heart hurts for women desperate and fearful who are lured into abortion, but I am TICKED OFF at how doulas are LYING to themselves. It is NOT supportive to have a mama hurt her baby! When a mama displays any symptoms of PPD or worse, postpartum psychosis, we contact her care provider to ensure her safety and her child’s safety. Just because abortion is legal does NOT make it ethical or morally permissible.
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