The Vital Work And History Of Abortion Doulas
The origins are as old as the record is of women who care for women, that is to say, old as the “witch” herself.
I n the wake of the 1973 landmark ruling Roe v. Wade in 1973 — which granted that a woman’s liberty right (ie, whether or not she is pregnant) is stronger than the state’s interest in the fetus’ life up until the “point of viability” — there has been a slow and steady unraveling of abortion rights in this country.
And most recently, there’s been a return to a rhetoric that vilifies everyone who nears a clinic, from the provider to the nurse to the patient. Anti-choice legislation such as “heartbeat bills” and 20-week abortion bans may be de rigueur, but attacks on those who administer terminations are as old as the practice itself.
Although the word has been reappropriated and reinterpreted in recent decades stripping it almost entirely of meaning, “witches” in the fourteenth century provided aid to ailing women, kicking off a period known as the Inquisition, a hunt for “heretics” that often murdered women on its altar to God.
Barbara Ehrehreich and Deirdre English’s Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: a History of Women Healers details the Medieval European, Papal-orchestrated and socially-sanctioned hunting…
