Abortion Doula CE Course
A Prerecorded Training
Our Abortion Doula Continuing Education course is a space for radical, supportive doulas and advocates who are ready to contribute to change in their communities and at the systems level.
Together, we will explore solutions to the tough questions and obstacles that abortion doulas and our clients face. In the United States, that means navigating the landscape of a Post-Roe reality. This course also touches on the Canadian perspective as well.
So what does an Abortion Doula do?
Abortion doulas provide emotional support to clients.
Emotional support is non-clinical and patient-centered. In other words, you will not be diagnosing, offering medical labels, or prescribing care.
The process of providing emotional support can occur before, during, and after the abortion procedure.
In the fast-paced, stressful, patriarchal, and often biased medical-industrial complex, people often leave appointments with their care providers feeling unheard and confused, or even gaslit.
As a doula, your work is to validate and affirm the big (and little) feelings, questions, and concerns clients share with you. The ways you see and hear them are invaluable. Your partnership can support the client in feeling stronger in their ability to advocate for themselves throughout their medical journey.
This continuing education course offers an opportunity to explore what it means to support abortion as a part of your practice.
Together, we’ll unpack misconceptions about this work and clarify the scope of this role.
We will consider policy and support you in understanding access in your local area. There will be context given for understanding abortion legislation, as well as working in both collective and private practice settings to increase access to safe and empowered abortion in your community.
Additionally, because doulas and clients may be met by anti-abortion rhetoric, policy, and bias, we will hold space to discuss scenarios and conversations that can arise in this work.
As we go deeper, you will gain direct and accurate information about what actually happens during various procedures. You will get a sense of what to expect and how to prepare for being in-clinic with clients. With this context, you’ll build a toolbox of support ideas to use in direct-client support.
As an abortion doula, your primary role is to support clients in feeling as comfortable and safe as possible. You co-create the space for clients to self-advocate through their reproductive experiences.
In community, we will consider the logistics of how to offer abortion support and contribute to access in your community. Some doulas join abortion support collectives and others, like many full-spectrum doulas, support folks through their private practices.
Finally, we will address community and self-care for doulas. This work is deeply important and it can be emotionally and physically taxing, as all companionship work can be. You will consider rituals and practices that will support you in showing up to this work well-resourced, as well as decompressing after offering support to clients.
As a full-spectrum organization, we prioritize creating courses and offerings that contribute to reproductive justice for all.
“SisterSong defines Reproductive Justice as the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”
Access to abortion care is a crucial and foundational part of reproductive justice.
Doula work is community care work, and while trainings and training organizations like ours may be relatively new, this work is not.
We honor all of the people who have supported their family members, friends, and community members through abortions (including self-managed abortions) across history and across cultures, and we give credit to the folks who have worked at the policy level to protect bodily autonomy and reproductive rights.
The Abortion Doula Continuing Education Course includes the following topics:
Intro to Policy & Background
Models of Abortion Doula Practice
Advocacy for Yourself and Your Clients
Clinical Abortion Procedures
Emotional Support for Abortion
Herbal Abortion 101
(Replays available for 365 days.)
Meet Our Teachers
Sabia Wade
Teacher - Advocacy for Yourself and Your Clients
Sabia (she/they) - The Black Doula - is a Radical Doula, Educator, Doula Business Coach, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (in training), and Reproductive Justice Advocate. She founded Birthing Advocacy Doula Trainings in 2019 with the goal of bringing necessary education to doulas that are seeking to go beyond the traditional doula role and into advocacy work for the communities that need them.
Ash Williams
Teacher - Intro to Policy & Background + Models of Abortion Doula Practice
Ash Williams (he/him) is a Black trans abortion doula, public intellectual, and abolitionist community organizer from Fayetteville, NC. For the last 5 years, Ash has been vigorously fighting to expand abortion access by funding abortions and training other people to become abortion doulas. Ash is an abortion doula with the Mountain Area Abortion Doula Collective.
Molly Dutton Kenny
Teacher - Clinical Abortion Procedures + Emotional Support for Abortion
Molly Dutton-Kenny, CPM, RM (she/her) is a midwife and community advocate based outside of Toronto, Ontario on Anishnabek, Haudenosaunee, Mississaugas of the Credit, and Attiwonderonk land. When not working as a full-time midwife, she specializes in community education around full spectrum pregnancy loss and abortion, and midwifery-based management and support of these experiences, centering home and holistic medicine as options for most people.
Daena Horner
Teacher - Herbal Abortion 101
Daena Horner (they/she) is the Executive Director of Holistic Abortions and Community Engagement and the manager for Faith Roots Reproductive Action. Daena’s expertise in reproductive justice and community-based participatory research is invaluable. Their commitment to collaborative and inclusive approaches will strengthen our efforts to advocate for reproductive health and autonomy.