Strategic Advocacy: Doula Care, Liminality, and Reproductive Justice

In this paper, we explain the larger political economy in which doulas work, highlighting the nature of their liminality, and their role in the reproductive justice movement. We then draw on over 60 qualitative interviews with doulas to articulate experiences and perspectives, demonstrating the ways they use strategic advocacy to meet the needs of birthing people. Finally, we consider how doula policies and practices could support doulas without compromising their focus on the birthing person. We argue that doulas embody care ethics that are critical for reproductive justice as their work is about humanizing the birthing person, often in the face of a heavily medicalized or biomedical/technocratic approach to birth that is depersonalizing or worse.