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April 11 is International Day for Maternal Health and Rights

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April 11 is International Day for Maternal Health and Rights where the focus is on every person’s right to respectful, quality, safe, and comprehensive maternal health care. According to the World Health Organization’s Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health, globally, 800 women die each day from preventable causes due to pregnancy and childbirth with the vast majority of these women in low- and middle-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. In order to make progress, we need to acknowledge the human rights necessary to improve maternal health outcomes and prevent maternal deaths.

The Wilson Center identifies five key human rights to aid in this goal:

  • The Right to Survive Childbirth

Approximately 287,000 women die due to pregnancy-related causes across the globe with most of these being preventable. The leading causes of maternal death are hemorrhage, infection, pre-eclampsia, and complications from delivery. These preventable deaths can be attributed to shortfalls in health care systems.

  • The Right to High Quality Care

Respectful maternity care is a core human right for pregnant people. It includes right to information, informed consent, and respectful care.

  • The Right to Equity and Non-Discrimination

Racism is a key drier of disparities in maternal health outcomes. In the United States, Black pregnant people are 3-4 times more likely to die in childbirth than white women (shoutout to Black Maternal Health Week—more to follow!). Internationally, people belonging to racial and ethnic minority groups report discrimination within the health system, systemic biases based on misinformation, and structural barriers to receiving high-quality care.

  • The Right to Government Accountability

Maternal health is essential to the health of communities. Governments have a responsibility to ensure the health and well-being of it’s residents, especially maternal health.

  • The Right to Family Planning and Contraception

Across low- and middle-income countries, about 218 million women are sexually active and report either not wanting more children or wanting to delay childbirth, but are not using any method of contraception. This leads to unintended pregnancies, further contributing to maternal mortality and morbidity. Increasing contraception and family planning access promotes the right to education and information, and the right to decide the number and spacing of children.

Support our work here!

Abortion support--an under-appreciated space for doulas

Although most people are familiar with doulas within the space of birthing support, abortion support is an additional space where doulas can provided much needed emotional and physical support for clients. In support of this, our 2023 has been busy with training doulas to work with clients seeking abortions.

Our summer and fall was spent building a cadre of people to understand the multifaceted needs of people seeking abortion care.

In June, we worked with Partners in Abortion Care to train 12 of their staff members in techniques for supporting people through the physical and emotional needs surrounding pregnancy termination.

We followed this in July with training an additional 14 abortion doula volunteers to work with local abortion providers in the Baltimore area.

This continued through the fall where we were able to conduct an additional training with the Baltimore Abortion Fund, an essential organization in our local community that provides financial and logistical support for individuals in the state of Maryland access abortion care.

Support our work here!

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Birth support services round-up

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Hello again friends!

Birth doulas serve an incredibly fulfilling role during pregnancy by assisting clients with physical, emotional, and mental support through a life-changing time through the prenatal period, labor and delivery, and postnatally. The birth support program is one of the signature programs for the Baltimore Doula Project.

Through the end of this summer, BDP has:

  • Supported 11 births that resulted in 11 happy and health babies

  • Paid doulas $9,700 to support those births by providing funds to pregnant people who otherwise would be unable to access doula services

  • Provided postpartum support to three additional clients

Our fall has been even busier, with nine births supported from September through the end of this year with nine already slotted for the beginning of 2024!

Check out some photos shared with permission by our doulas and their wonderful clients.

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BDP Prison Support: What do we do?

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The Baltimore Doula Project has been providing doula services at the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women (MCIW) since 2016, but we experienced a pause in programming from 2020 until May 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As you can see from our recent blog posts we are excited be able to work at MCIW again and are eager to share our work with our supporters. Since June 2023, when we were able to be back in person at MCIW, to October 2023, we have:

  • Spent an average of one hour and 56 minutes at each doula session for a cumulative 23 hours and 20 minutes

  • Served eight unique clients, including seven who were currently pregnant and one postpartum client

  • Provided a welcoming space where no one who is eligible for the program and invited to attend has declined to do so

  • Seen an average of three clients per meeting

  • Donated a multitude of lactation supplies including a deep freezer for milk storage, ten breast pumps, two boxes of milk storage bags, and one box of nursing pads

  • Provided a breast pump to all clients who have expressed interest in pumping milk (a total of five clients)

  • Donated $3,000 worth of infant care supplies between June and October 2023, not including breast pumps

Support our work here!

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Thank you to the Mitzvah Fund!

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Thank you to the Baltimore Community Foundation Mitzvah Fund for Good Deeds!

We are a fully volunteer-run operation. Our ability to do our work depends on support from foundations dedicated to improving the Baltimore community as well as individual donors. We recently were awarded a grant from the BCF Mitzvah Fund in order to provide infant supplies to our clients at the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women (MCIW).

We also know that for pregnant people, a baby registry can be an important part of the preparation for baby. Within our MCIW doula program, we have six clients, three are in their third trimester, two recently gave birth, and one is in the second trimester. Our baby registry campaign on behalf of these clients allows us to directly send infant care supplies to the infants’ caregivers.

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Gratitude

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To all of the long time followers of the Baltimore Doula Project, our organization is one of constant evolution as our volunteers come and go and the needs and interests of our core stakeholders—our doulas, our clients, our community members, our volunteers—evolve as well. With all of the changes, we often forget to take pause and show our gratitude for the work of our doulas and the support of our funders.

Recently, we were able to restart our doula program within the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women (MCIW). As a society, we often neglect that our reproductive needs do not stop when we are incarcerated. Find below a letter of thanks from one of our clients within MCIW. Someone we have been able to serve because of your support.

August 17, 2023

To The Doula Project,

I am writing this letter to your organization to express my gratitude. This program that is provided to us pregnant inmates is absolutely amazing. I enjoy the groups so much that at the end of Monday’s session I am literally on my homemade calendar counting down the days until the following Monday’s group. These sessions are therapeutic and they are great of rate soul. The information provided by these ladies is amazingly helpful and to think they don’t get paid to come and see us. I want to thank you all for not only being there as friends you could say but for all the services provided by your organization. I went from feeling helpless because I am pregnant and incarcerated unable to do things to prepare for when my daughter is born to feeling hopeful because I have a whole team of people who have my back.

I am sending my thanks to your entire team for all that you guys do and prove for us inmates who find ourselves hopeless in most situations involving our incarcerations, because of what services your program [provides] we are no longer helpless but hopeful. Thank you again for all you do.

I want to give a special thank you to Shelby and Jamira. These two ladies go above and beyond to help us [and are] always encouraging us, speaking up for us, and dealing with the comings and goings involved in providing a service at MCI-W. Thank you for all your time, dedication, and loyalty to us.

Sincerely,

A client of the BDP Prison Program

It has been a long time coming, but we are truly grateful for your continued presence and support of the Baltimore Doula Project and our work.

Baltimore Doula Project