Jen Jester is no stranger to grief.

Throughout her career as a midwife and doula, she has become adept at helping grieving parents advocate for the ashes of their lost children, at helping mothers say goodbye to babies that were never born, and at sitting with these parents as they experience the darkest days of their lives.

Jester learned these skills by helping three patients through their abortions.

The first was a particularly devastating emergency induction that lasted for four days after the loss of a 22-week pregnancy. This was unimaginably difficult for the family, especially because they were delivering within a Catholic hospital, she says.

“We had to really fight with the administration to get them to receive services for the loss, because it was a medically induced abortion,” Jester says.

Jester had to help advocate for a medical procedure known as a laminaria, which opens up the cervix so the fetus is actually “born” through the birth canal.

“When she goes into labor, you’re laboring with them, just like you would any other birth,” Jester says.

This includes helping them to stay comfortable by rubbing their back, making sure they are eating and sleeping, checking in with their partner and monitoring any bleeding. The last part of that support can save lives. Jester’s patient began to hemorrhage after her birth while the doctors and nurses were out of the room. Jester alerted them to the emergency.

Much of the work Jester helped with was emotional rather than strictly medical, and she played a special part in the grieving process.

“That baby, when she was born, was swaddled and given to the mother right away. We talked the mother through how to touch and talk to the baby, cry with the baby. I educated the parents that they can spend as much time as they want with the baby. Whether it’s two minutes or two days, it doesn’t matter,” Jester says. “Helped them understand what it means when the funeral home comes in to collect the baby’s body, what kinds of things they can ask for from the hospital for the future, in terms of things like the baby’s footprints or advocating for the baby’s ashes.”

This abortion experience “was a long, hard first initiation into loss,” Jester says.

It wasn’t abnormal. For a midwife assisting with all types of births, abortion and miscarriages are par for the course, Jester says. But now, the act of doulaing an abortion has become highly politicized. Doulas fear that Missouri Republicans will use the fact that some “full-spectrum” doulas help with abortion procedures to thwart efforts to add Medicaid coverage for doulas.

The aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling didn’t lead to the creation of abortion doulas. Full-spectrum doulas have been around for years. Instead it brought more attention to them, leading to more awareness of the resource and more media coverage.

In addition to doulas who practice privately, many abortion clinics nationwide — including Planned Parenthood affiliates — partner with abortion doulas to provide education and emotional support during procedures.

Deciding whether to obtain an abortion can be a traumatic, emotional and private decision. Since the reversal of Roe v. Wade led to a near-total abortion ban in the state of Missouri, this decision has become even more difficult.

Now instead of speaking with loved ones, counselors and even pastors about their decision, some people are unsure of who they can trust with this information, lest they become complicit in a crime as the ever-changing landscape of abortion laws become murkier.

Abortion doulas are stepping in to fill these support gaps for those seeking care, providing education, a hand to squeeze and even transportation across state lines. click to enlarge ZACHARY LINHARES Nancy Lewis is the board secretary for the St. Louis Doula Project.

Abortion Isn’t Going Away

Nancy Lewis remembers when Roe v. Wade was handed down, and its overturning struck her hard.

Lewis says she’s always been an abortion rights advocate and, as an educator of more than 25 years, she understands the importance of information and being able to decide things for yourself. This, coupled with alarming statistics surrounding Black infant and maternal mortality rates, inspired her to become a doula. Providing services relating to abortions was just another piece of that drive.

“I believe in autonomy. I don’t think that other people, especially men, need to tell women what to do with their bodies,” Lewis says.

Lewis signed up to train as an abortion doula shortly after the Supreme Court ruled on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, and now she serves as board secretary for the St. Louis Doula Project. This collective of doulas has been leading the charge in the state to train and provide resources to doulas assisting with abortion care.

LaKisha Redditt is co-chair of the board. She says that following Missouri’s abortion ban taking effect, doulas in the organization were inundated with pleas for help. Patients wanted support during the procedure, which was made infinitely scarier by a tenuous legal situation, and help understanding the law and what they could advocate for while receiving care.

The project got to work and wrote the first and only abortion doula training in the state, Redditt says.

These doulas have a simple but daunting task: to educate and support.

“A lot of times people don’t even know what that process is, what it looks like, what the law is centered around it right now,” Redditt says. “We help them by educating them on what to expect when they go to the clinic and what the implications might be.”

A doula can also help a patient by working with them to determine the best procedure for an abortion based on the viability and gestational age of a fetus, Redditt says. Then, the doula will review the procedure step by step and help the patient to know what to expect at the clinic.

Redditt says that after attending the procedure with the patient, doulas provide postpartum care that is very similar to what they would provide following a live birth.

“I don’t care what anybody says, after you have an abortion, you still gave birth. And you still have a postpartum period that can last just as long as the bleeding after a live birth,” Redditt says.

Overall, the care doulas offer abortion patients looks incredibly similar to the same support they give parents experiencing live births. They offer resources and check-ins, and can connect patients to mental health services and counseling. One doula in the collective has even helped a patient find housing when she was displaced, Redditt says.

Abortion doula training enhances and builds upon the information doulas are already trained in and adds a more intense focus on the legal roadblocks thrown up by lawmakers. It also covers more practical aspects of the job including what to carry in a doula kit when assisting with an abortion and how to help someone physically and mentally through the lactation process that they may still undergo.

Doulas do not assist with giving any kind of medication to the patients, Redditt stresses.

“We talk about racial bias, and what that looks like in health care. We talk about trauma-informed care, what that looks like. We talk about grief and loss,” Redditt says. “A lot of people don’t understand that there’s still grief associated with the loss of a child, you still are losing that fetus, if you decide that you are not going to keep it.”

Training and specifically knowing the ins and outs of an evolving abortion law landscape are especially important in Missouri, which has some of the most stringent laws in the country.

“Part of the abortion doula training is not just the knowledge of the laws, but how to keep the abortion doula and the client safe as a result of the laws,” Lewis explains. “We have to be very careful and cognizant of how we are meeting clients. We don’t work with them with other family members and friends because this has to be very confidential because it is illegal in Missouri for them to have an abortion.”

The biggest barrier to providing this care is not knowing who to trust, Redditt says.

“We don’t know who’s really on the same side as us half the time because people can say, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m on the side of that. I agree with that.’ And then the next thing you know, you’re in handcuffs and you don’t know why.” click to enlarge ZACHARY LINHARES The St. Louis Doula Project was honored for its work.

During RFT’s conversations with Redditt and Lewis, both women were worried that their support for those seeking abortions would be used by the Missouri legislature as an argument against allowing Medicaid to cover all kinds of doula services.

Now Redditt and Lewis worry that as they work to seek Medicaid reimbursement for doulas, their unwillingness to abandon patients who are having abortions is becoming politicized.

Historically, it’s been a long road for advocates working toward Medicaid reimbursement for doula services, Okunsola Amadou, founder of Jamaa Birth Village, explains. The organization has been credited by doulas like Jester for leading the charge in the legislature to expand Medicaid’s reimbursement to doulas.

In 2021, Jamaa Birth Village joined forces with other leading maternal health advocates to write a Medicaid Doula Reimbursement brief. In 2022, the organization began meeting with Representative LaKeySha Bosley (D-St. Louis) about a bill that would allow for this reimbursement.

The lack of Medicaid reimbursement for doulas predominantly harms Black and brown communities, Amadou says. Doula support and care can be lifesaving for Black women, who face higher rates of maternal mortality.

“Black women are dying and being harmed at higher rates than white women while they are debating over dollars and while they’re debating on the policy, and it is deplorable,” Amadou says.

Unfortunately the bill won’t see passage this session, Amadou says.

“We’ve had some challenges, but we’re hoping to continue to work with Bosley and her office and advancing this next session,” she says.

While the support for doula reimbursement is a bipartisan issue, misconceptions about doulas are working against the bill’s passage, Amadou says. This includes abortion.

“Abortion does play a role in that because the Republicans were put in control of the House at this point; that’s why we’re having issues with that,” Amadou says. “So we do need to be clear that you have many different types of doulas and to not lump them all in the same thing respectively.”

Abortion is not specified in the reimbursement legislation under discussion in Missouri. Instead it focuses on covering a person’s entire pregnancy journey whether that results in a loss, live birth or termination.

“I think the misconception is that we only support one thing,” Redditt says. “I consider myself a full-spectrum doula. And for me, my definition of full-spectrum means the entire spectrum of reproductive possibility. So if that means that this parent is choosing to do surrogacy, that this parent is choosing adoption, that this parent is choosing abortion, that this parent is choosing to give live birth, I support their reproductive choice because this is their reproductive system, it ain’t mine.”

Despite the legal hurdles, Redditt says she is still fighting because she recalls her own experience with a dilation and curettage procedure, which some people who’ve recently miscarried in Texas have had trouble obtaining due to the abortion ban there.

“I lost my baby in 2018, and I was 16 weeks pregnant. But at the ultrasound at my next doctor’s appointment, they didn’t find a heartbeat for my baby. And when they did the measurements to check out gestational age, I had miscarried three weeks prior but my body never went through the miscarriage process,” Redditt says. “I think back to how scared I would have been had I been in this situation during this time.” click to enlarge ZACHARY LINHARES Lakisha Redditt’s personal experience after a miscarriage makes her sympathetic to women in similar situations.

Love and Loss

The second abortion Jester supported was a 20-week loss she encountered as a midwife.

“A client found out at her 20-week scan that the baby’s intestines were outside of its body,” Jester says. “And the baby had something called hydrocephalus, where there’s like a bunch of fluid on the brain, and so the chances of survival are incredibly slim. There’s no surgeries that this baby could have received because of how bad it was.”

Jester talked the parents through their options and helped them decide whether to continue the pregnancy or to end it, knowing their child would likely not survive regardless.

“I stayed in the room and waited for them to come out of surgery and was there when she woke up and cried with them, and helped her for six weeks with her postpartum recovery like a normal midwife would do, monitoring her health and her bleeding and her cessation of lactation,” Jester says.

click to enlarge ZACHARY LINHARES Jen Jester cradles a stone with a fetus painted on it. For Jester, part of being a doula is assisting clients in the grieving process.

Jester also helped the parents through the process of advocating for a biopsy of the fetus’ remains so that they could have a better understanding of what happened.

“What was interesting about their story is that they went on and became pregnant again,” Jester says. “And we worked together, and they had a long road with genetic counseling and things like that with that next pregnancy, and so that wound up being a really neat, full-circle experience for them. But yeah, that one was pretty tough.”

The other abortion Jester supported more closely resembles what many people think of when they hear the term “abortion.”

A 19-year-old became pregnant by accident and decided, after speaking with Jester, to go through with a medication abortion as they were still only about six or seven weeks along in their pregnancy.

Jester drove the teen to Planned Parenthood and stayed with them as their main source of emotional support during the appointment and ultrasound. She was also there as the teen took the pills for the medication abortion, she says.

Then it was a matter of keeping them comfortable, ensuring they had enough pads and ibuprofen, monitoring their bleeding, ensuring they took the pills at the proper time, and providing comforting herbs and heating pads to help with the stress and pain, Jester says.

“This person didn’t want to connect with the contents of conception and so we just managed that bit by bit and helped them know when it was all done and then what to expect postpartum,” Jester says. “I even connected them with a spiritual healer that they wanted, so that they could sort of make peace with the loss of the pregnancy. Because they eventually became sad about the choice, even though if they were to go back, they would still choose that. But it’s still an emotionally painful choice to have to go through. And so getting them connected to spiritual counselors and things like that that are in their comfort zone is another part of that process.”

The hardest part of Jester’s job as a doula and midwife assisting with abortion is helping each individual in a way that caters to their specific needs.

“While they’re emotional, figuring out what they need can be difficult, because sometimes people don’t even know what they need. And so that’s hard,” Jester says. “If I have a special connection with that person, sometimes it’s really hard to watch them struggle. And it’s also really hard to know when you’re supposed to help and when you’re supposed to sit on your hands and let them have their story.”

Subscribe to Riverfront Times newsletters.Follow us: Apple News |  Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

Source link

A warrant was issued yesterday for the arrest of Arnoldo Galvez, a man living in St. Louis originally from Mexico, who allegedly threatened to kill a man helping members of Galvez’s own family seek asylum in the United States. 

According to a St. Charles County Police probable cause statement, Galvez went so far as to threaten to burn down the house of the individual helping Galvez’s wife and other family members obtain asylum. He is now facing a felony harassment charge in St. Charles County. 

Police were initially contacted by the unidentified victim in the case on May 1 at a hotel in O’Fallon. The unidentified victim explained to police he was “unsure” why Galvez was mad about him aiding Galvez’s family in their efforts to seek asylum.

He also explained that the reason the family sought asylum in the first place was because Galvez had killed a man in Mexico, and the family of the man Galvez killed was seeking retribution. 

After police met with the man at the O’Fallon hotel, they went back to his residence to meet with other family members of Galvez, who only arrived in this county within the past few weeks. 

Police also viewed a video, taken on May 1, that shows Galvez yelling at his wife and the man helping with the family’s efforts to gain asylum. In that video, Galvez issues the threat for which he’s now charged. According to the probable cause statement, Galvez has made other threats against the man helping his family over the phone. 

Galvez was not in custody as of last night, though he has been ordered to come to the St. Charles County Jail for fingerprinting. The police report notes that Galvez has a fake driver’s license from the Mexican state of Guanajuato with a different name on it.

Subscribe to Riverfront Times newsletters.Follow us: Apple News |  Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

Source link

The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department has launched an internal investigation in response to a video taken over the weekend showing an officer light up a stogie in the middle of placing a man under arrest. 

That video, originally posted by Voice of the People News, shows the officer pinning the detained man on the ground with his knee. The officer has one hand on the man’s chest and the other on a cigar. 

At one point in the brief video, another cop hands the officer a lighter, which he then uses to light up. Though the detained man makes a minor effort to free himself, the officer doesn’t let that get in the way of a good smoke. 

Mitch McCoy, director of SLMPD’s Public Affairs and Information Division, says that the department is aware of the video and the purpose of its internal investigation is to figure out “what led up to the video and the events that transpired after.” He said the officer was working a secondary job at Marquee Lounge on Locust Street at the time of the incident. 

Prior to the moments captured on video, lounge staff had asked that the detained man be removed from the establishment. He was later taken into custody for trespassing on private property and resisting arrest, McCoy says. However, it appears any charges are still pending, as no one has been charged with those specific offenses in the city since Saturday.

After Voice of the People posted the footage to their Instagram account, it racked up almost a quarter million views as of last night. 

At one point in the video, the man about to be taken into custody says something about how he also has a lighter. 

“Pull your lighter out, bro,” a bystander shouts, while laughing. He then rethinks his advice. “No, don’t pull it out. They might think you got a gun.”

Subscribe to Riverfront Times newsletters.Follow us: Apple News |  Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

Source link