Serving time in prison is, obviously, unpleasant. But being pregnant behind bars is immeasurably more traumatic. While physical stress can take a toll, the emotional impact can be even worse. Many facilities use restraints during delivery, and in most cases female inmates are forced to say goodbye to their newborns shortly after giving birth.

But a couple of states are working to ease that trauma through an unconventional new approach: bringing in doulas to assist pregnant inmates. Unlike a midwife, who typically helps only during childbirth, a doula assists a woman throughout her entire pregnancy, attending to her physical and emotional well-being before, during and after giving birth.

Alabama this spring launched the Prison Birth Project, with the goal of assigning doulas to support about 30 female inmates in the first year. The effort was launched thanks to the help of Wendy D. Williams, the state’s first deputy commissioner for women’s services in the Department of Corrections. Williams’ position was created in response to a scathing report from the U.S. Department of Justice in 2014, which detailed deplorable conditions for inmates at Alabama’s Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women. That report highlighted a number of troubling prison practices, including systemic sexual abuse of inmates by guards as well as other prisoners. While Williams has been working to address that and other issues at the facility, the report also got her thinking about childbirth in prison, and the role that plays in determining a woman’s future once she leaves incarceration.

Williams turned to the Minnesota Prison Doula Project, which launched in 2011. That program currently serves women in 81 county jails and has supported around 100 incarcerated women over the past five years. It’s entirely voluntary. “Women will hear about another woman who got a doula during her pregnancy and will be interested and come to one of our support meetings,” says Erica Gerrity, the project’s program director. “This is one opportunity for women in these situations to feel empowered.”