Addressing the Doula Paradox: An Analysis and Reimagining of a Changing Role in Reproductive Justice

The history of obstetrics and obstetric violence shows that, historically, midwifery has been just as safe, if not safer than in‐hospital birth. Using Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish as a theoretical framework, we can see how hospitals, like most social institutions, function as disciplinary forces for social control. In this article, I analyze the hospital doula as an example of Foucault's docile body to demonstrate how doulas act as reformists while indirectly furthering the medicalization of birth and the marginalization of the midwife within the institution through assigned subservience and cultural assimilation. In addition to textual analysis of other scholars' work on birth and birthing in the US, I employ narrative theory and autoethnography of my several years' experience as an in‐hospital doula to reimagine the doula's role and propose sustainable and practical solutions to obstetric violence and medicalization. I argue that doulas, as midwifery advocates, can assist in shifting the birthing paradigm from obstetrics to midwifery by dispelling myths about home birth and by informing clients about the safety of midwife‐supported pregnancy and birth.