When I first heard the term “abortion doula”, I was moved by the idea of providing companionship to people undergoing a very private, yet externally politicized, experience. My curiosity led me to the Doula Project, a collective of volunteer doulas offering physical, emotional, and informational support for all pregnancy outcomes—birth, miscarriage, stillbirth, fetal anomaly, and abortion.
I interviewed seven doulas from the organization about how they got there, their passion for reproductive justice, and how they act as witnesses to their clients with the goal of making them feel human and seen. Unable to shadow them in their work, I relied on the narratives of two interviewees to fill the piece with scenes, and gave myself further background by reading The Doulas: Radical Care for Pregnant People, penned by two of the Doula Project’s founders.
The full article is below and here. I continued my investigation of abortion narratives in my Masters coursework, which you can read about here.
