Women would think it strange if a medical clinic offered a special volunteer to hold their hand while having teeth pulled or tonsils removed.
Yet, abortion activists are encouraging women to serve as volunteer comforters during abortions – what they describe as a similar medical procedure. They say abortions are safe and normal medical “care” for women, but it’s clear that even they do not believe it.
The Washington Post recently published a lengthy feature about the D.C. Doulas for Choice, which trains volunteers to hold women’s hands and comfort them as their unborn babies are aborted.
Traditionally, doulas are trained laypeople who provide comfort and support to pregnant women as they go through the labor and delivery of their babies. Abortion doulas’ roles are similar, except they support pregnant women whose unborn babies are being killed.
During a recent training hosted by the D.C. abortion group, facilitators explained that the job of an abortion doula is to be “in a surgical room with a woman through one of the most intimate emotional experiences of her life.”
Here’s more from the report:
The women the doulas helped would be strangers, the facilitators explained. The doulas would know them only by their first names. After they left, the doulas would never see them again.
Outside the clinic, abortion was vast and abstract. Inside, abortion was a five-minute procedure happening to actual people. To be an abortion doula meant being a part of the pro-choice movement at its most granular, most personal, where philosophical debates fell away.
The article primarily followed an abortion doula named Grace who grew up in a conservative, Christian home and became a birth doula as an adult. Earlier this year, she aborted her unborn baby for convenience reasons. Then, she decided to try volunteering as an abortion doula.
Her first time volunteering was with an abortion doula named Tahira. Grace said she wore turquoise scrubs and sat in a carpeted room where someone had placed a Bible and a small fountain. She observed how Tahira approached and spoke with the patients as they waited to have an abortion.
The report described her experience:
The woman didn’t offer why she was having an abortion. She didn’t say anything about her pregnancy. Tahira had explained to the patient that doulas were free, voluntary, and there to offer comfort. The patient had responded, “I could really use that right now,” and that was the only thing about her they knew.
A little while later, Tahira and Grace stood in the surgery room with the patient, a doctor, a nurse, an anesthesiologist. “Take a big breath, look at me,” Tahira told the patient, as the nurse adjusted her feet and told her to scoot down on the table. The patient looked up at Tahira with big eyes. “Deep breaths, we’re going to do deep breaths,” Tahira said, as the anesthesiologist injected the sedative. “I know this is scary but you are tough.”
They had been in the room with her for almost exactly five minutes. The sound of the doctor’s medical vacuum was about as loud as a Dustbuster. There was blood in a tube; the doctor worked fast. Tahira and Grace stood with the woman in the baggy sweatshirt, while in the waiting room, there were six more patients to go.
Five minutes with the second patient: Talking about whether there was anything good on Netflix.
Five minutes with the third: Talking about workout regiments, whether it was better to go to the gym every day or let muscles rest.
Five minutes: “I’m so f—– up about this,” the patient said, rubbing her eye with her fist. “That’s okay, that’s normal,” Tahira said. “I’m so f—– up,” said the patient again.
Sometimes, Grace said she talks with the abortion patients about what they watch on TV, how often they go to the gym or even about their children. She said she is there to offer support, not judgment, no matter what the woman’s circumstances.
She is one of the few doulas from her training class who still volunteers. Many others apparently could not stomach standing in a surgical room watching as an unborn baby’s life is destroyed.
It’s interesting, abortion activists claim pro-life advocates stigmatize women when we say that an abortion destroys a baby’s life or encourage women to see an ultrasound of their unborn child. They want the public to think of an abortion as a routine women’s medical procedure. But these abortion doula programs show that even they know deep down that an abortion is something more. They know that an abortion is emotionally and ethically troubling, though they may not consciously admit why.
