#CLPP2016 is coming up!

CLPP2016

The Civil Liberties and Public Policy program at Hampshire College hosts an amazing reproductive justice conference every spring. I’m lucky to be one of the presenters this year, with three other amazing volunteers from the Boston Doula Project. Our workshop will be on Sunday morning from 9-10:30am, titled, “So your friend is having an abortion. How can you help? A doula perspective.”

Abortion doula or full spectrum doula collectives have begun forming across the U.S. Whether due to location, time or availability, you may not had the opportunity to be trained. We will discuss the role of doulas and the physical, emotional, informational, and spiritual support abortion doulas can offer in order to help build skills to provide non-medical support to people having abortions. This workshop won’t be enough to prepare you for work shifts in a hospital or clinic, but it will help you feel better prepared to support the people in your life (1 in 3 cis women in the U.S.—surely that includes people you know!) who are having abortions.

Check out more of the incredible, informative, inspiring workshops here.

Learn more about registering for CLPP2016 here. Childcare, food and other resources are available for those who need them!

The Papaya Workshop at Hampshire College

PapayaWorkshopHampshireThe Civil Liberties and Public Policy program at Hampshire is hosting an amazing lot of Fall 2015 events. One of which is a Papaya Workshop, or “how to use a manual vacuum aspirator using a papaya as a uterine model,” with me, from the Boston Doula Project!

I’m lucky to have the week between on-call windows for birth clients, and I will head to the lovely western part of this state to help educate reproductive justice activists on how simple an abortion can be (mechanically). The workshop will be aimed toward those without clinical experience. As an educator of abortion doulas, I know how helpful it can be to see these tools in use before ever coming across them in clinic.