Founded in 2013, the Wesleyan Doula Project began as a small group of students passionate about reproductive health and dedicated to extending their passion and impact beyond Wesleyan’s walls. After teaching a student-run forum on the politics of birth in America and seeing the widespread interest in reproductive rights on campus, two Wesleyan students began contacting local clinics about the possibility of having students volunteer as abortion doulas. WDP’s founders recognized that college students are well situated to provide abortion care – unlike birth work, weekly shifts fit well into a student schedule, and the campus setting fosters both support and innovation around thoughtful work in the wider community.
After establishing our first partnership with a local clinic, the WDP officially began training our first doula cohort during the 2012-2013 school year. Since then, the WDP has trained over 150 students and 30 community members to work as abortion doulas. The project has expanded and professionalized its operations, partnering with a total of three local clinics, winning a seed grant award from the Wesleyan Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship, and cultivating relationships with reproductive rights organizations and activists throughout the country. Additionally, the WDP has recently helped to establish a number of new college doula project chapters across the country, leading training sessions at Oberlin College, Yale University, Williams College, and Amherst College.
Clinic Presence
The deep stigma attached to abortion renders it an experience that necessitates individual support, while simultaneously making it very difficult for people to access. The WDP sends volunteer doulas into three local abortion clinics twice a week, all year round. As doulas, we’re fully integrated into the clinic, working closely with staff and patients during procedures. Due to security concerns, people getting abortions aren’t allowed to bring friends or family into the procedure or recovery rooms. Doulas are able to fill that absence. As the only individuals in contact with each person before, during, and after their procedures, doulas work to make sure that patients receive attentive and compassionate care and that communication remains open between patients and their providers. We estimate that we reach around 48 people each week and 2,500 people each year.
Campus Presence
The WDP runs a comprehensive abortion doula training for Wesleyan students and community members each year. This training includes hands-on workshops on support techniques, lectures on biological and medical processes related to pregnancy, and talks by guest speakers on reproductive health and policy. We also provide in-clinic shadowing opportunities for new doulas. We have trained approximately 80 doulas since the organization was founded in 2012. In addition to our annual trainings, we host informational panels for the wider Wesleyan and Middletown community, as well as regular community gatherings for our trained doulas.
National Presence
While some organizations also provide birth services, others (like us) focus specifically on abortion or pregnancy loss care, filling unmet need in communities that may already have accessible birth doula care. Together, we comprise the Full Spectrum Reproductive Support Network (FSRSN), a collaborative network dedicated to coalition building across geographic borders to advance the tenets of Reproductive Justice and the accessibility of Full-Spectrum doula care throughout the country. Visit our FSRSN page to explore the member projects around the country.
History of the Full-Spectrum Doula Movement
Doulas have been around for centuries, but the conversation around doula care in this country has gone through major shifts in the past ten 10 years. Since the founding of Doulas of North America (DONA), an international birth doula organization, in 1992, the presence of birth doulas in mainstream consciousness has increased, particularly in liberal and affluent communities.
However, about 10 years ago, some birth doulas and reproductive justice activists began asking two critical questions about who was receiving doula care and on what terms:
1. Why are we only providing doula care for people who can afford it and feel comfortable asking for it? The typical birth doula model is client-based – a pregnant person will seek out a doula of their own accord and hire a doula to attend their birth and/or work with them postpartum. This model works very well for pregnant people who have the means to hire doulas and live in communities that speak about and support doula care. But what about people who don’t?
2. Why are we only providing doula care to the support the experience of one pregnancy outcome? What about abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, and birth for adoption? Don’t these experiences, often ridden with additional levels of stigma and emotion, also call for the increased support?
Out of this thinking came the Full-Spectrum Doula Movement, made up of doulas committed to providing free, accessible, and non-judgmental support to people throughout the spectrum of pregnancy and its potential outcomes. As the first full-spectrum organization, The Doula Project outlines:
“Full-Spectrum Doulas strive to foster a culture that trusts people and their inherent strength to make the best reproductive decisions for themselves. We believe that all individuals deserve access to supportive services along the full spectrum of pregnancy experiences and outcomes.”
The Full-Spectrum movement is still fairly new, but has been actively growing throughout the country. For more information, check out our Full-Spectrum Doula Network resources.