Synopses & Reviews
While more feminist activism has migrated online, doulas remain focused
on life’s physically intimate relationships: between caregivers and
patients, parents and pregnancy, individuals and their own bodies.
Weaving together personal narratives, medical experience, and political
investigation, The Doulas is the essential guide to this growing social movement.
Synopsis
Weaving together how-to manual, activist memoir, and manifesto, The Doulas is an "honest, raw, and charged" treatise on full-spectrum doula care. (Rewire)As more feminist conversation migrates online, the activist providers of the Doula Project remain focused on life's physically intimate relationships: between caregivers and patients, parents and pregnancy, individuals and their own bodies. They are committed to supporting a pregnancy no matter the outcome--whether it results in birth, abortion, miscarriage, or adoption--and to facing the question of choice head-on.
In this eye-opening book, Doula Project founders Mary Mahoney and Lauren Mitchell present the history, philosophy, and practices of these caregivers, contextualizing the doula movement within the larger scope of pregnancy care and reproductive rights. They illustrate how, through their unique hands-on activism, full-spectrum doulas provide tangible support for those confronting life, death, and the sticky in-between.
Synopsis
Through their unique hands-on activism, full spectrum doulas provide tangible support for those confronting life, death, and the sticky in-between.
About the Author
Lauren Mitchell, M.S., has been working to change the culture of
medicine for the better part of a decade. In addition to being a
full-spectrum doula and founder of The Doula Project, she is a certified
Gynecological Teaching Associate, teaching medical and nurse
practitioner students to be able to perform gentle, patient-centered
physical examinations, and a teacher of literature and the humanities in
medical school settings.
As a co-coordinator of the
Reproductive Choices Service of New York City's largest public hospital,
she has been able to infuse an extremely medicalized system with
compassionate patient care. She is a graduate of the Narrative Medicine
program at Columbia University, and is currently pursuing a PhD in
medical humanities at Vanderbilt.
Lauren is a well-known and
established speaker and trainer in the fields of reproductive justice
and medical humanities, and has presented for a wide variety of
organizations including NAF, NAPW, the Abortion Access Network, NOW
(National and Regional Summits), FemSex, Hampshire College, Columbia
University, the Barnard Center for Research on Women, among many
others.
Mary Mahoney, LMSW, is a full spectrum doula and Founder and Board
Co-Chair of The Doula Project. She has served hundreds of pregnant
people across the spectrum of choice and trained activists, doulas,
clinicians, and medical students around the country on the abortion
doula model of care. Mary is the former Assistant Director of the
Pro-Choice Public Education Project, and a graduate of the Silberman
School of Social Work at Hunter College. She is currently a licensed
social worker, focused on the intersection of trauma and child
development.
Over the past eight years, Mary has been a key
player in several reproductive justice-focused coalitions and think
tanks. In one notable role, she was appointed to the Women’s Health and
Leadership Network at the Center for American Progress in 2010 where
she, as the sole service provider, helped inform national reproductive
and economic justice policy.
Mary has published pieces for the
Center for American Progress and RH Reality Check and contributed to
several reproductive justice briefing books and research reports,
including On Our Terms: Young Women of Color, Reproductive Justice, and Activism and the Reproductive Justice Briefing Book: A Primer on Reproductive Justice and Social Change.
She has spoken about reproductive justice and full spectrum doula care
at conferences and workshops around the country. Mary is currently based
in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York.