Tango Bango

Pro-life is easy if you’re privileged

Do you know that many women who are doing their pre-abortion counseling at Planned Parenthood say things like:

- “I’m not like all the other girls/women in the waiting room.”
- “I don’t believe in abortion, I think it is morally wrong.”
- “I just can’t do this right now, it will ruin my life. But I feel so guilty because I’ve been pro-life this whole time.” 

The moral of the story is that it’s easier to be “pro life” when you’re not in the situation yourself.  A good percentage of the women in abortion clinics find themselves in situations where they cannot afford a child, where they feel they are already undersupporting the children they have, where their birth control failed, where they risk being beaten by their parents or significant others, and struggle with the fact that they considered themselves ‘pro-life’ before coming into these circumstances.

Let’s see how you feel about abortion when a 30 year old woman comes in, battered and bruised from her drug addicted husband, screaming that she can’t have the child because she is trying to run away from her partner and needs to live on the street while she finds herself a new life without him.  See how you feel while she is bawling because she doesn’t want to lose her baby, but feels that her life is at risk if she carries this man’s baby to term.  Imagine how you would feel without a support system, without help.

How would you feel if you were homeless, addicted to crack and meth, struggling just to live, selling your body so that you can buy food for yourself, living in a dirty alley?  How about if you were then pregnant because you were raped while sleeping out in the open? Unable to care for yourself properly, yet supposed to nurture your body and help yourself deliver a healthy child? Unable to access resources to help you get clean and forced to have a baby who is born addicted to crack that no one will want to adopt?

In your perfect privileged world, it’s easy to be against abortion.  It’s easy to be blind to the true struggles that underprivileged women go through.  It’s easy to assume that what you want for yourself and your family is what everyone should legally be forced to want as well.

Doulas and crisis pregnancy centers do not mix

Crisis Pregnancy Centers are non-profit facilities run by religious pro-life volunteers that position themselves as a medical facility offering support to pregnant women. They advertise that they offer support for women choosing abortion, adoption, and keeping their baby. Instead, they use abortion imagery, incorrect facts and statistics, sonograms, and coercion tactics to convince pregnant women to keep their babies. 

They lie to women. They assume that women are not strong and able enough to make their own choices about pregnancy.  They use false advertising and scare tactics to manipulate women into using their services.  They often name themselves something similar to a nearby abortion clinic to trick women. They try to fool women into thinking they’re not pregnant so that they become too far along to legally abort. They discourage women from using some forms of birth control. They lie about the medical qualifications that they have. They disguise the outside of their buildings to look like abortion clinics. 

You absolutely cannot support one of these clinics by offering doula services to them.

A doula is a “woman who serves” by the Greek definition.  They believe in a woman’s power to choose the best decisions for herself.  By using evidence-based medicine, they educate pregnant mothers about all of their options, trusting their ability to choose. They become a pregnant women’s close support structure, someone that the woman can lean on and trust. 

As a doula, we are trained not to make medical suggestions and advice. We are trained to put our own religious and moral beliefs aside, and support a mother through any choice she may make. We are here to serve HER. She becomes our world. 

A doula would not manipulate a woman into making a choice. A doula would not coerce someone using scare tactics and misinformation. A doula would never attempt to influence a woman’s choice with her own personal religious or political beliefs. A doula wouldn’t deceive the woman she is working for and with, and wouldn’t support an organization that does this regardless of their personal views.

You do not have to be pro-choice to see how crisis pregnancy centers are unethical, wrong, and are not at all aligned with our mission as doulas.

Volunteering, cross your fingers for me!

I have applied to two programs that I really want to be accepted into.  The first is a volunteer doula program for women and girls who have chosen abortion.  This would be a very critical volunteer program that is very much central to what I want my doula work to be all about: full spectrum care for women regardless of what they decide to do with their pregnancies.

The second is a volunteer doula program for the San Francisco General Hospital, where I could provide support for women who are giving birth in the hospital without any other support figures present. This would be an incredible experience for me.

Finally, I’ve joined up with a program that is going to be providing pregnancy support to incarcerated women in jail in San Francisco. This is a brand new program that is just getting started, and I’m attending a meeting on Sunday.  So much is happening! :)