I’ll Admit . . .

Unborn-child-sucking-thumb  . . . that when I first read about "abortion doulas," I wasn't sure about the meaning of the word "doula."

Well, I recognized the origin of the term. It was clearly derived from the Greek word "doula," which means "female slave" or "female servant" or "handmaiden" or things like that.

But I wasn't aware of what it meant in a twenty-first century, English-speaking context.

It turns out that doulas are women who aren't midwives but who assist pregnant mothers during the act of giving birth and/or after the child has been born.

MORE HERE.

Unfortunately, I'm not a father. My wife died before we were able to have children, so I'm not up on some of the terminology . . . at least in the home-birth movement.

I suppose my recognition of the origin of the term reveals me as a nerd, while my failure to know its current meaning reveals me as a n00b.

Still . . . 

I CAN SPOT A BIOMEDICAL HORROR WHEN I SEE ONE.

Your thoughts?

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

11 thoughts on “I’ll Admit . . .”

  1. Satan can fight but never win. Victory is already won by God. All we have to do is be holy and we shall share in the fruits of God’s victory and share these same fruits with others. One day the evil of abortion will be vanquished, because it is already defeated by God.

  2. I was so moved by the beautiful picture you posted with this, I barely read what you said (sorry). My heart was saying, “When are we going to restore the Right to Life to our beautiful unborn brothers and sisters?” I hope it’s soon! As for the perversity of the Culture of Death , I believe history will look back on this generation with revulsion at the horrors that have been committed, perhaps even more than we do when contemplating Slavery or the Nazi Holocaust.

  3. I´m sorry for that, Jimmy.
    Weren´t you thinking about adopting one? For sure you´d be good father.

  4. I am a trained doula, a real one who ministers to families through the births of their children. This is a travesty, but I am not surprised. There are rifts in the natural birth movement, which seem to divide advocates into two camps: the new age/spiritualists and the Christians. There are a few in between, but they seem to be few and far between. The division stems from the revival of home birth/natural birth in the ’60s and ’70s. The new agers tend to be radically feminist and sadly have bought the whole package of “choice” and abortion.
    The irony is, that women often make the decision to abort because they have no other support system. So these “doulas” are offering a temporary avenue for the support these women long for and deserve, however quickly the doula will be out of the picture and women will still be dealing with the devastation of their lives which brought them to the point of termination in the first place and the added burden of regret for a child they will never meet.
    I also wonder how hardened a woman would have to be or become to witness these assaults on women over and over again. Many birth doulas will confide to one other how difficult it can be to watch women be rammed through the American birth machine, with little opportunity to grasp the individual miracle of the birth of this baby to this family. How much worse to accompany women into the planned death of their children?

  5. I wonder if somewhere doulas are also sneaked in shady legislation that will require all doctors to be instructed or instruct others in such “procedures” even if they will never actually perform them.

  7. Maybe, for some, recognizing the traumatic nature of an abortion will be the first step towards the realization that it is evil. One can hope, at least . . .

  8. This reminds me of the practice of little ceremonies – “christenings”, farewells, etc at abortions, that I’ve read about in the past couple years. An attempt to legitimize abortion by giving it the trapping of natural death.

  10. This is sad…I know so many wonderful doulas and I hate to see the term co-opted by women in the service of death rather than life. One of my doula friends is deeply involved in perinatal hospice for children with poor prenatal diagnoses…in comparison to the nobility of her work, these ‘abortion doulas’ look like the worst sort of enablers and panderers.

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