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.

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BDP Prison Support: What do we do?

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

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