At a time when we are seeing so many heartless examples of Republicans making news headlines around the country, making remarks or political moves often seen as “anti-woman,” Lewis County has a local Republican that we can take pride in.
State Rep. Richard DeBolt’s House Bill 2016, which provides a mechanism for volunteer doulas and midwives to provide care for incarcerated pregnant women, originally passed in the Washington state House back in March 2017 but was finally signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee this week.
According to reporting in The Chronicle, “The legislation allows volunteer midwives and doulas access to help inmates before, during and after childbirth.”
According to a statement from the Washington state House Republicans website, DeBolt also stated that, “If you can help an inmate understand that she can be a better mother, you’re giving her tools to change the course of her life for the better … This bill is one way we can offer incarcerated moms a bit of hope these situations can be turned around and they will be reunited with their children.”
As someone who has utilized both the care of traditional OB/GYNs and also a doula and midwife during my pregnancies, I can tell you that this is a highly compassionate move from DeBolt.
When pregnant inmates are booked into jail or sentenced to prison time and they don’t have medical insurance, it becomes the responsibility of the county and/or state to provide medical care for that mother. And, while many of our local maternity clinics and care professionals are fantastic at what they do, providing excellent maternity care through a clinic model, traditional obstetrics professionals are not the same thing as a midwife — these are often two completely different (and equally important) approaches to a woman’s medical needs.
I think it’s reasonable to believe that women who are pregnant and incarcerated need additional support. While an OB/GYN will provide maternity care to a woman — and certainly do a wonderful job — they often don’t provide much of an emotional component to complement their care (in my personal experience).
Doulas and midwives are often rooted in the concept of “mothering the mother,” believing that compassionate birthing care for women — care that includes deeper emotional support — should be the norm. When we think about and consider some of the dysfunction that many incarcerated women have experienced, and the flawed models they have been exposed to and raised in themselves, having a strong, stable, experienced professional to provide that higher element of connection and support seems like a no-brainer.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the terms, midwives are able to provide maternity care and provide exams, while doulas are often strictly emotional and informational support providers dedicated to the care of the pregnant woman. These are important distinctions to note in this case. Both doulas and midwives perform a specific level of care for pregnant women — one delivers babies, the other supports the mother during pregnancy, before and during labor, and after the birth in the postpartum period.
So many questions arise during pregnancy — often in the middle of the night or odd times of day. Knowing that pregnant women might have greater access to pregnancy and birth professionals, outside of standard, routine clinic visits, can provide a lower level of stress during pregnancy, which contributes to a healthy pregnancy.
Making sure that a professional can reach these women to provide encouragement, tools, resources and information is a progressive and impressive cause. Taking the time to have a heart for women who are often cast aside in our society gives me greater hope for their rehabilitation and reunification with their babies.
We already know that many women deal with some form of postpartum depression under even the best of circumstances. So, making additional volunteer support available to women under some of the most difficult circumstances — when their baby is placed in temporary or long-term care of a guardian or foster parent — seems like common sense.
“This isn’t a new concept. Midwives and doulas have been helping pregnant women for centuries,” DeBolt said in a statement. “It’s important we allow inmates access to the benefits of these volunteer services to help ease the difficulty of being pregnant in circumstances that are far from normal.”
At a time when many feel that women’s health care is under attack, specifically from male Republicans, it’s so refreshing and heartening to see this legislation be championed by our own local, male, Republican representative. I applaud DeBolt for partnering with other legislators and individuals to make this effort a reality.
I hope to see our local Lewis County Jail utilize this option — I’m already aware of doulas in the Centralia-Chehalis area who are interested in volunteering their time to provide this new option for care.
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Brittany Voie is a columnist for The Chronicle.
