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January 19, 2024 17 mins

Bria (Bri) Goode, host of Support Unseen and Senior Research Manager at Ibis Reproductive Health, introduces Support Unseen as a podcast about navigating feelings and experiences around abortion processes - the people who receive it, and those who provide it - and the systems and landscapes these folks work with, against, and alongside. She speaks with Paulina Guerrero, former National Programs Director at All-Options, about the study that informs this podcast and what folks hoped to achieve through the study of non-medical support for abortion.

 

Episode resources and social media handles:

Follow All-Options on Social Media:

Follow Ibis Reproductive Health on Social Media:

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Share this episode: https://supportunseen.podbean.com/e/support-unseen-introduction

Contact us here: bgoode@ibisreproductivehealth.org

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Hello and welcome to SupportUnseen, a podcast about receiving
and giving abortion support.
I'm your host, Bria Goode.
This podcast is here to explore,share, and bring to light what
radical, holistic, and person-centeredabortion support looks like.

(00:45):
If you're interested in understanding whatsupport before, during, and after abortion
looks like, this is the podcast for you.
If you're a champion of open-hearted,compassionate care, you're listening
to a relevant conversation.
If you had abortions and wantto learn more about the support
network you experienced a piece ofduring that moment in your life,

(01:06):
you've made it to the right place.
Support Unseen is about navigatingfeelings and experiences about abortion
processes, the people who receive it andthose who provide it, and the systems and
landscapes these folks work with, against,and alongside people seeking abortion may
need or want emotional and informationalsupport throughout their decision-making

(01:26):
process, during their abortionexperience, and even after their abortion.
Some get it from theirfamily, friends or partners.
Some get it from providersor spiritual leaders.
Others may be looking for a neutralperson, someone who understands
but is not a part of their world.
We created Support Unseen toshare with you all what we have

(01:48):
learned from all of these things.
What started as two organizations,Ibis Reproductive Health and
All-Options asking questions like,Why do people need abortion support?
And, Who are these peopleproviding abortion support?
These questions then developedinto a research project and is
now a five-part podcast thatyou are tuning into right now.

(02:11):
We hope you'll join us for each episode.
When we think about key people involvedin abortion access, we often think
about policymakers who can widen,reduce, or ban access; advocates who
work every day to push for the rightto reproductive freedom; clinicians and
staff who work in clinics, hospitals,or provide abortion services via

(02:32):
telehealth; and the pregnant peoplethemselves who are seeking services.
We don't often talk about the many peoplearound this country who are providing
holistic, compassionate support outside ofthe clinic to people in their communities
before, during, or after their abortions.
This podcast is about the abortiondoulas, hotline, volunteers, patient

(02:54):
advocates and navigators, drivers,hand holders, community organizers,
companions, and community health workers.
All of these supporters, and manymore, hold space for people as they
navigate the emotions, the logistics,and the information of deciding,
finding, getting, and reflectingon their abortion experience.

(03:17):
Now, you may ask yourself,Why would people need support?
There are many answers, includingfragmented systems, such as lack of
funding and difficulties finding orgetting to care, stigma and/or fear
around abortion due to lack of knowledgeand open conversations about abortion
in pregnancy, and ranges of emotionsaround pregnancy, abortion, family,

(03:41):
gender roles, and life circumstances.
There is a lot to unpack, a lotof various stigmatized networks,
care providers, and experiences.
We want to talk about them alland share what we can with you.
As one care provider interviewed forthe research behind this podcast said,
"Everybody comes to their abortion clinicexperience from a different understanding

(04:04):
in that particular moment in theirlives and in that particular pregnancy."
Regardless of what moment orexperience you come from in your
life, here we're starting together.
In this introduction we hope we canshed some light on these particular
moments in the lives of abortionseekers and those that care for them.
Let's get to it.

(04:50):
I'm Bria Goode, but youall can call me Brie.
I'm a research manager atIbis Reproductive Health.
I lead and support qualitative projectsfocused on expanding abortion access,

(05:14):
knowledge, support, and coverage.
I've worked to advance reproductivehealth and justice over the last few
years through community-based research,education, outreach, data analytics,
and direct support in the communityas a doula and childbirth educator.
I'm Paulina Guerrero, and as the NationalPrograms Manager at All-Options, I
recruit, train, and manage volunteerpeer counselors for two national hotlines

(05:39):
that provide emotional support to folksin all of their pregnancy experiences.
My background is in reproductive rightsand justice, harm reduction, food
insecurity, and academic folklore.
I've been providing one-on-one care topeople seeking abortions since 2001.
At All-Options, we provide unbiased,judgment-free support to folks in the

(05:59):
full spectrum of pregnancy experiences.
We work on the ground in Indianawith our Hoosier Diaper Program
and the Hoosier Abortion Fund.
Our national programs arethe Talkline and Faith Aloud.
The trained volunteer counselors staffingboth of these lines provide callers
with open-hearted emotional support,resources, and referrals for any of their

(06:20):
pregnancy decisions and experiences.
The Talkline offers secular support,while Faith Aloud is for spiritual
support around pregnancy decisions.
The MCs Project specificallystudied callers from the Talkline.
So a little bit about this researchproject we keep referencing.
The MCs Project was a two-partproject that included in-depth

(06:40):
interviews with abortion seekerswho called the All-Options Talkline,
and focus group discussionswith abortion support providers.
The goals of this project were todevelop evidence about experiences
of abortion seekers with non-medicalsupport, and understand its effect
on abortion quality and attitudes.
We also wanted to build collaborativerelationships between support-providing

(07:02):
individuals to gain a deeperunderstanding of the work that they
do with the hopes of sharing researchfindings, addressing challenges,
and just creating opportunities forthe expansion of remote non-medical
abortion support in the United States.
For this podcast, we are focusingon abortion support providers
and the things we've learnedfrom the focus group discussions.

(07:24):
Ibis Reproductive Health andAll-Options held four focus groups,
or convenings, from October 2021to May 2022, with support providers
from a variety of organizations.
These convenings were used to understandopportunities for and challenges to
expanding abortion support provision,develop goals and actions to expand remote

(07:46):
support provision, and to ultimatelyreflect on the results of the in-depth
interviews with abortion seekers and howthey apply to the work the providers do.
So Paulina, could you define whatnon-medical abortion support means to you?
Sure.
So, non-medical support to memeans supporting the whole person

(08:07):
in their pregnancy experience.
And that term, whole person can be writtenoff as trite or new agey, but it, it
actually is so incredibly important.
Medical processes do nothappen in a vacuum to a body.
They happen to a person who isnavigating multiple layers of
emotional and logistical complexity.

(08:30):
So non-medical support iscritical to medical support.
It is recognizing thatfeelings, spirituality, and
empowerment is fundamental.
And there's not always a lot of thatrecognition in the medical world and
in the political spheres either, and sonon-medical support opens up different
possibilities for people in how they feeland respond to their abortion experience.

(08:53):
That's awesome to hear.
So you and Jane Seymour werethe biggest people who really
kind of started this project.
What were you and Jane ultimately lookingto achieve and bring to light with this
project, especially with the convenings?
So I think we were hoping to providesome actual qualitative data that
demonstrates the impact of non-medicalsupport to abortion seekers.

(09:17):
Now, the people on the ground who dothis work understand to their very core
of their being the importance of it.
There's nothing new in the study forthose folks, but I think we were looking
to provide a language that peopleoutside of this work could understand
that was codified and measurable.
There are so many people in positionsof power in the medical community,

(09:38):
funders, grantors, political spheresthat love to just brush this kind of work
aside, diminish it, make it irrelevant.
Triage it as like, sure, it's nice to havethat, but it's not as important as actual
clinical care or political advocacy.
And what those of us who have donethis work, emotional, non-medical
support, know, is that this isactually the critical, foundational

(10:02):
taproots of a person's experience.
And experience is everything.
If someone seeks abortion care anddoes not have emotional support for
the complexity that a pregnancy brings,the reproductive health, rights,
and justice movement is essentiallyabandoning that person to the tidal wave
of stigma and shame that our culturethrives on heaping on pregnant people.

(10:26):
And so with the convenings, we really turnto the experts in this work of non-medical
support to find out how they take onthis immense task and show up for their
communities and clients every single day.
And these folks have incrediblecourage and insight, um, that we
really were excited to, to highlightand understand, um, and discuss.

(10:48):
And so, why is that important for callersand their community, such as their
partners and family members, maybe evenproviders, how is this important for the
reproductive justice movement overall?
That's a great question, and Ithink that the insight behind it is
really, um, is really interesting.
We know from both the MC study and ourown internal statistics on the Talkline

(11:13):
that people who have emotional supportaround their pregnancy and abortion
experiences, are more likely to supportother people in their full spectrum of
options and experiences around pregnancy.
So this work is actually culturechange work, which quite frankly, if
we only expect the medical communityor the political spheres to do

(11:33):
that, has not always gone so great.
So if we could envision the possibilitythat emotional support is actually
what will tear the fabric of oppressionand activate people to support each
other, that actually gets us somewhere.
Mm, tear the fabric of oppression.
I love that.
Can you walk us through who wasincluded in the convenings and why

(11:55):
these particular people were chosen?
Yeah.
It was a really exciting processbecause we put together an advisory
board of leaders and changemakersin the doula, reproductive justice,
medical community, and grassrootsmovements to help us decide who the
20 convening participants should be.
So they made theirrecommendations and nominations.

(12:17):
And then we invited 20 conveningparticipants to join us for the set of
convening meetings and focus groups.
And these folks are an amazing group ofpeople who do multiple channels of work.
As said in the intro, it encapsulatesdoulas, community workers, drivers,
hand holders, and so much more.
And many of these, these folks, ifnot all of them, really, um, are doing

(12:39):
multiple types of work of this kind.
Mmhmm.
The space and the field seems so vast.
You name doulas, communityworkers, drivers, hand holders.
It's, it's endless.
Mm-hmm.
Um, so we're so, so excitedto learn more about that.
At least I am.
So, we have so much in storefor this podcast, but what's one

(13:00):
or two things you want peopleto take away from this podcast?
I think if I had to narrow it down totwo things, it would be this: Number
one, that emotional and spiritualsupport does encompass many things,
but for me, fundamentally is aboutbeing with someone, and letting them
be in their life at that very momentwithout trying to change them or fix

(13:23):
them in any way, without having somekind of an agenda for their experience.
And I actually don'tbelieve anybody is broken.
And the second thing that I wouldwant people to take away from these
is that, I believe that this work isactually the key to changing everything
individually and collectively so that wecontinue to move us towards liberation.

(13:48):
And we're on the movement towardsliberation with this podcast.
We have an amazing set of episodesand people planned for this series.
Each episode will include a key themethat emerged from the convenings,
and we'll have abortion supportproviders who had a part in these
convenings speak on each topic.
Here's what you can expectfrom the upcoming episodes.

(14:10):
The first episode, we'll give an overviewof what unbiased, radical, and holistic
person-centered care looks like, andexplain the various ways that people
are giving and receiving that care.
For our second episode, we'll explore howthis type of care compares, contrasts, and
maybe even fills gaps to the care providedby the medical industrial complex.

(14:32):
The third episode is aboutintersectionality and how that shows
up within the reproductive justice,or RJ movement, and with other
movements outside of the repro world.
In addition, we'll talk about how peoplewithin the RJ movement show up and
support one another through this work.
And lastly, with all of thisinformation, we'll take some time to

(14:54):
envision what the future of abortionsupport looks like and how we can get
to this new and imaginative world.
We can't wait to bring you alongthis radical journey with us.

(15:26):
Thanks for listening to SupportUnseen, a podcast about receiving
and giving abortion support.
This podcast is hosted by Bria Goodeand written by All-Options and Ibis
Reproductive Health staff, including BriaGoode, as well as Sarah Baum, Tessa Green,
Paulina Guerrero, and Anna Malefatto.
Our editor and produceris Garnet Henderson.
Our intro and break music isfrom Night Watch by Radio Pink.

(15:49):
You can find Support Unseen on Spotify,Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and
wherever else you listen to podcasts.
For more information aboutAll-Options, visit www.all-options.org.
To learn more about Ibis ReproductiveHealth, visit www.ibis, that's
I-B-I-S, reproductive health dot O-R-G.

(16:12):
If you or someone you know needsemotional support for abortion or any
reproductive decision or experiences,call the All-Options Talkline
at 1-888-493-0092 for unbiased,compassionate support and resources.
We'd like to thank all of our guests aswell as all participants in the social
and emotional support for abortion study.

(16:34):
And as always, we'd like to thank ourlisteners for joining us in imagining
a future without Abortion Stigma.
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