 I'm excited to be collaborating with Tewa Women United to offer an online Abortion Support Skills for Doulas course specifically for doulas in New Mexico. Tewa Women United's Indigenous Women’s Health and Reproductive Justice Program is home to the Yiya Vi Kagingdi Doula Project, a community-based doula program.
Most participants in the course will be part of Tewa Women United's programs, but I'm opening up a few spots to other folks from New Mexico who want to take advantage of this special opportunity to learn and network together with other doulas across New Mexico. The New Mexico course begins Oct 8, with live online course meetings on Mondays at 6pm MT. To learn more or to be considered for participation in the Abortion Support Skills for Doulas in New Mexico Course please find the application here. Would you do me a favor? If you know any doulas in New Mexico, please share this email with them. I'm also offering a general call online Abortion Support Skills course, which is open to participants from anywhere in the world. I'm offering this course in the daytime instead of the usual evening timing, because some folks have told me they haven't been able to take the course because evenings don't work for them. We'll have our live online meetings at 11am EST/8am PST. The open call course begins Sept 28. To learn more or to be considered for participation in the Abortion Support Skills course please find the application here.
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 My summer reading:
"Prenatal Substance Use: Exploring Assumptions of Maternal Unfitness", commentary co-authored by Mishka Terplan, one of our Full-Spectrum Doula Circles speakers this month. The commentary authors write: “Pregnant women who use substances deserve compassion and care, not pariah status and punishment.” I read journal articles so you don’t have to! I’ll ask about this commentary during the Full-Spectrum Doula Circles webinar on Pregnancy and Drug Use: The Facts. I'm so grateful to the more than 55 people who weighed in on designs for the new Full-Spectrum Doula Circle logo! It helped me to eliminate designs & to ask designers to try adjusting popular designs to make them work even better. Check out the gorgeous and distinct new logo! I think it really expresses the unique character of Full-Spectrum Doula Circle and I'm happy to be able to share it.  In the U.S. 90% of abortions happen in the first trimester, which means later abortion stories may be less familiar to us.
Still, tens of thousands of people have later abortions each year. These people face increased stigma and barriers to accessing care. I'm grateful to Kate Carson for generously sharing sharing her story of ending a wanted later term pregnancy with the Full-Spectrum Doula Circles.  Last month I had the pleasure of facilitating an in-person abortion support skills workshop for the Jane Fund of Central Massachusetts and NARAL Pro-Choice At Clark University.
These folks in the photo above all spent a whole beautiful, sunny Sunday indoors so they could build knowledge and skills to increase the ways in which they support their abortion fund's callers. I feel so fortunate to have gotten to spend that day facilitating learning and growth with them. So much love and gratitude to everyone who participated.  I just read The Mothers by Brit Bennett. It's an engaging novel about adolescence, sexuality, friendship, motherhood, and the Black church.
Abortion is central to the narrative, but the book doesn't really take a clear stance on the pro-choice/anti-choice divide. I think, though, a great deal of what goes wrong for the characters in this story can be attributed to the stigmatization, shame, and secrecy around abortion and adolescent sexuality. Have you read this book? What did you think? Can you recommend another novel about abortion? Today's discussion in Refilling The Cup, the online course on self-care for doulas, inspired me to share this quote from Poonam Dreyfus-Pai, who's deputy director at All-Options, and who was the speaker for the January Full-Spectrum Doula Circle: "Boundaries aren't there to fence me in or keep people out, but actually to allow me to interact with the world and to interact with things that I love with flexibility and with grace."   In March Full-Spectrum Doula Circle passed 1,000 likes on Facebook!
Thank you, dear community, for standing together in supporting people in all their pregnancy outcomes -- birth, abortion, or any of the many ways people experience transitions out of pregnancy. Thank you for standing with each other to strengthen all of our ability to show up and love folks as they move through these powerful transitions. 1,000 likes - amazing! Together, we are a mighty force of love. ️️  I got to hear Khiara M. Bridges talk last week about her research on how poor women in the U.S. are stripped of their rights to privacy as they access healthcare.
It got me thinking about how doulas ask for information about clients. Can we talk about doula intake processes?
Here's info about Khiara and her awesome work: https://www.bu.edu/law/profile/khiara-m-bridges/  I just listened to the webinar summarizing the results of the big new report reviewing scientific evidence on The Safety and Quality of Abortion Care in the United States. So much data!
Most of it's not really a surprise, though:
You can download all 200 pages of the study here http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/Reports/2018/the-safety-and-quality-of-abortion-care-in-the-united-states.aspx |
AuthorSarah Whedon, Archives
December 2019
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