What do we mean by "full-spectrum"?

The idea of a full-spectrum approach to pregnancy support is really quite radical.

Did you know that the Doula Project in New York City, the first group of its kind in the country, started off as the Abortion Doula Project before they realized they needed to broaden their scope and be prepared to provide support for the full spectrum of pregnancy outcomes? 

In the January 2018 Full-Spectrum Doula Circle, featured speaker Poonam Dreyfus-Pai said: 

"A full-spectrum doula is someone that is willing to be with someone in the midst of a pretty enormous transition, a bodily transition, sometimes an emotional transition, an immense transition out of pregnancy... regardless of what the outcome of that transition is."

The outcome could be birth, it could be abortion, it could be miscarriage, stillbirth, or adoption. 

I want to  have more conversations that put all these pregnancy outcomes on a spectrum instead of in silos, and that consider the spectrum of race, gender, class, and all the other important ways our identities shape our pregnancy experiences.

I want to have more conversations about how we approach care work differently when we adopt a full-spectrum approach, and about what the relationship is between full-spectrum care and a reproductive justice framework.

I want to talk about why it was big news when the first combined birth center & abortion clinic in the U.S. opened in 2014.

I want to talk about what professor and full-spectrum doula Jessica Shaw calls "the affinity between birth activism and abortion activism."
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​One way we do this is with a monthly online gathering (okay, so it's a webinar, but that word sounds so cold and corporate) of the Full-Spectrum Doula Circle.

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