The idea for prison birth support in Minnesota began in 2004 in direct response to the expressed needs of pregnant and parenting women in prison. After years working to better understand this complex circumstance, a new hypothesis emerged -- doulas could potentially fill a gap in access to support for birthing, incarcerated people.

In 2010, under the fiscal sponsorship of Everyday Miracles, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit, the Minnesota Prison Doula Project (MNPDP) formally began supporting birthing people in the Minnesota Correctional Facility (MCF)-Shakopee, offering weekly prenatal and parenting education and support groups uniquely tailored to the experiences and needs of incarcerated mothers. In November 2010, a MNPDP doula attended the first birth of an incarcerated woman in the state of Minnesota. That same year, Dr. Rebecca Shlafer from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Pediatrics partnered with the program to measure and evaluate outcomes and participant experiences.

In time, participants brought their experiences in county jails to our attention and urged us to explore expansion. In 2012, we engaged with jail administrators throughout Minnesota to systematically collect information about policies and practices in these facilities, uncovering a gap in programming and resources for pregnant women and mothers, and in some cases, human rights violations and pregnancy losses that resulted from lack of access to care.

In 2014, MNPDP expanded pregnancy and parenting programming to the two largest jail facilities in the state and began working with our first adolescent incarcerated female.

​​In 2015, we partnered with the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at the University of Minnesota with the goal of becoming an independent nonprofit, enhancing our capacity to scale, and putting us on a trajectory for greater impact.

In 2015, MNPDP was invited by the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) to explore a prison doula project at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women. During that visit, with the blessing and support of ADOC Deputy Commissioner Dr. Wendy Williams, the Alabama Prison Birth Project was born. In 2019, the two projects came together to form one shared, hybrid, non-profit under the name the Ostara Initiative.

Inspired by the word Ostara, with origins in the celebration of spring and regrowth, Ostara Initiative is the mother organization for both prison doula projects, as well as two new programs aimed at growing representative leadership and reversing the mass incarceration of mothers in America.

Together as one organization, we share and spread what we have learned from our decade of work inside facilities, raise authentic voices and leaders among those directly impacted, and incubate innovation and change, inside and outside our nation’s criminal justice system.

Today, Ostara supports pregnant and parenting, justice-involved people in nine correctional facilities throughout Minnesota and Alabama. Of the 24,000 women who will come under correctional control in Minnesota this year, 4-6% (960-1440) will be pregnant.

Each week, our team reaches over 160 individuals at the following facilities: Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women, Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee, Hennepin County and Ramsey County Correctional Facilities, St. Louis, Beltrami, Crow Wing, Pine, and Olmsted County Jails.