All the talk today, and possibly for years to come, will be about the overturning of Roe vs Wade by the Supreme Court (06/24/22). Women are up in arms in what they consider an assault on their health care choices and rights. Many are sounding the alarm of a return to back alley abortions where many women lost their lives in a desparate attempt to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. Women are pushing for a ROEVEMBER when they head to the voting polls to vote against those enacting laws making medical choices for women and limiting their healthcare choices. Hostages currently in the Israel - Hamas conflict, are being raped and inpregnated, and by U.S. laws, will be forced to continue the pregnancy of the rapist once released.
The internet has been a source for bomb making and the ability to make lethal weapons for several years now. Will it be the go to source for abortion needs? Will there be a rise in hollistic abortions or apothecary services as a healthy/safe alternative and a new choice in women's health care due to laws restricting doctors from performing abortions? Let's look to the past in determining a new possible path for the future.
Such preparations are no more likely to terminate a pregnancy than they are to induce potentially lethal
reactions such as vomiting, hemorrhages, and convulsions in the women who take them. Overconsumption of pennyroyal and mugwort, for example, can cause liver failure, according to Ryan Marino, the medical director of toxicology and addiction at the University Hospitals in Cleveland. Several extreme cases of herbal poisoning among his patients, including some who suffered seizures have been noted with Pennyroyal. Truly effective
abortifacients were not developed until the end of the 20th century, when the
biochemical processes behind cell division and growth and the role of hormones in reproductive processes were understood.
The medical literature of classical antiquity often
refers to pharmacological use of plants and herbs) means of abortion; abortifacients are mentioned, and
sometimes described in detail, in the works of Aristotle, Caelius Aurelianus, Celsus, Dioscorides, Galen, Hippocrates, Oribasius, Paul of Aegina, Pliny, Theodorus Priscianus, Soranus of Ephesus, and others.
In ancient Babylonian texts, scholars have described multiple
written prescriptions or instructions for ending pregnancies. Some of these
instructions were explicitly for ingesting ingredients to end a pregnancy,
whereas other cuneiform texts discuss the ingestion
of ingredients to return a missed menstrual period (which is used repeatedly throughout
history as a coded reference to abortion).
"To make a pregnant woman lose her
foetus: ...Grind nabruqqu plant, let her drink it with wine on
an empty stomach, [then her foetus will be aborted]."
The ancient Greek colony of Cyrene at one time had an economy based almost
entirely on the production and export of the plant silphium, which had uses ranging from food to a salve for feral dog
bites. It was also considered a powerful abortifacient used to "purge the
uterus". Silphium figured so prominently in the wealth of
Cyrene that the plant appeared on coins minted there.
The
ancient city of Cyrene in modern-day Libya was famous for a plant called silphium that grew nowhere else. Silphium was the
wonder herb of the classical world. It was a type of fennel, sort of like
celery, or maybe parsley, with heart-shaped leaves. The Greeks and later the
Romans imported it in massive quantities. They served it in fancy meals like
stewed flamingo. They used it to cure growths in the anus and the bites of wild
dogs. Men used it as an aphrodisiac. And women used it to, as Hippocrates and
Pliny and other doctors at the time delicately put it, “purge the uterus.” Of
course, not everyone could afford silphium. The Greek physician Dioscorides
wrote down a recipe for “abortion wine” that contained ingredients that could
be gathered closer to home—hellebore, squirting cucumber, and scammony—but
neglected to mention quantities.
For Aboriginal people in Australia, plants such
as giant boat-lip orchid (Cymbidium
madidum), quinine bush (Petalostigma
pubescens), or blue-leaved mallee (Eucalyptus
gamophylla) were ingested, inserted into the body, or were smoked
with Cooktown ironwood (Erythrophleum
chlorostachys).
In the Middle Ages, women who wanted to
restore their cycles were instructed to eat, among other things, crushed ants,
the saliva of camels, and tail hairs of black-tail deer dissolved in bear fat.
But herbs were generally considered more helpful, not just in Europe, but
everywhere in the world: blue cohosh, calamus, horseradish, and red cedar in
North America; Peruvian bark in South America; the boat-lip orchid, blue-leaved
mallee, and Cooktown ironweed in Australia.
Historically, the First Nations, people
of eastern Canada used Sanguinaria canadensis (bloodwort)
and Juniperus virginiana to
induce abortions
According
to Virgil Vogel, a historian of the indigenous societies of North America, the Ojibwe used blue cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides) as an abortifacient, and the Quinault used thistle for the same purpose. The appendix to Vogel's book lists red cedar (Juniperus virginiana), American pennyroyal (Hedeoma pulegioides), tansy, Canada wild ginger (Asarum canadense), and several other herbs as abortifacients used
by various North American Indian tribes. The anthropologist Daniel Moerman wrote that calamus (Acorus calamus), which was one of the ten most common medicinal
drugs of Native American societies, was used as an abortifacient by the Lenape, Cree, Mohegan, Sioux, and other tribes; and he listed more than one hundred
substances used as abortifacients by Native Americans.
The historian Angus McLaren, writing
about Canadian women between 1870 and 1920, states that "A woman would
first seek to 'put herself right' by drinking an infusion of one of the
traditional abortifacients, such as tansy, quinine, pennyroyal, rue, black
hellebore, ergot of rye, sabin, or cotton root."
During the American slavery period, 18th and 19th
centuries, cotton root bark was used in folk remedies to induce a miscarriage. Cotton root bark was
historically used by indigenous North American tribes as an emmenagogue and abortifacient. Its use as an emmenagogue
was adopted by the Eclectic physicians, and as an abortifacient by southern
physicians into the 1800s. The plant has a profound history, reportedly used as an
abortifacient by female slaves in the United States who were frequently victims
of rape by their “masters,” and consequently, experienced unwanted pregnancies.
In the 19th century Madame Restell provided mail-order abortifacients and
surgical abortion to pregnant clients in New York.
Early 20th-century newspaper advertisements included
coded advertisements for abortifacient substances which would solve menstrual
"irregularities." Between 1919 and 1934 the U.S. Department of
Agriculture issued legal restraints against fifty-seven "feminine hygiene
products" including "Blair's Female Tablets" and "Madame
LeRoy's Regulative Pills."
The
peacock flower (or flos pavonis) is an arresting plant, standing nine feet tall in full bloom,
with brilliant red and yellow blossoms. But it’s more than beautiful; it’s an
abortifacient, too. One of the most striking records of the plant comes from
German-born botanical illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian who, in her 1705 book
Metamorphosis of the Insects of
Surinam, recounts “The Indians, who are not
treated well by their Dutch masters, use the seeds [of this plant] to abort
their children, so that their children will not become slaves like they are.”
Two other naturalists had also discovered the peacock flower’s use as an
abortifacient in the West Indies. Michel Descourtilz, a Frenchman, had observed
its same use in Haiti, writing with disdain of the “ill intentions of the
‘negress’ who aborted their offspring.” Another remarked on the “guilty
practice of preventing pregnancy by use of herbs” and was surprised that slave
women used them effectively, that the “drinks did not destroy health.”
Commonly accepted abortifacients and emmenagogic herbs include
(but are not limited to) tansy, thuja, safflower, scotch broom, rue, angelica,
mugwort, wormwood, yarrow, and essential oil of pennyroyal. “Black Cohosh Root
(Cimicifuga racemosa) is a relaxant and normalizer of female reproductive system. Eases painful and delayed menses, ovarian cramps, or womb cramps.” It’s best for,
among other things — aborting a baby.
It took me only five minutes to find this history of herbal plants used to abort pregnancies throughout history. If I were in need of terminating a pregnancy the amount of information about the chemicals and their combinations and actions on the body could easily be found and researched. Access to materials such as medication, herbs, and chemical compounds is easier to obtain in our consumer economy.
Of course, there is always danger in self medicating any health condition and we witnessed that first-hand with people turning to unsafe ingestion of medicine and herbs in an effort to fight off or prevent Covid-19 (Coronavirus) infection. But, nevertheless, people do turn to home remedies, herbs, and what is considered hollistic treatments.
The internet has become a resource rich enviroment for almost anything a person has a desire to research and learn. There will be great sources of information and misinformation found on the internet. We will not know in which direction this wind of change regarding abortion will blow women when it comes to unwanted pregnancies. Only time will tell. Below was another online site I found that goes into detail on using herbs to abort a pregnancy with doses and pros and cons on using each herb. Notice it is a D.I.Y. (do it yourself) guide. How many women will be turning to such care? Have women been left to "Do It Yourself" in this area of medical health? A major reason Roe v Wade was inacted into law was to keep desparate women wanting to end a pregancy safe from dying trying to end an unwanted pregnancy.
Herbal Abortion
a woman’s d.i.y. guide by Annwen
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/annwen-herbal-abortion
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On that same note, people look forward to 'What can BE' in their lives too. Some have been on a diet since the start of the new year and can't wait to show off their new body. Others are seeing those transformed bodies and their chances of being their new love. There is definitely a stirring of GROWTH happening in the soil and in us to produce and to reproduce. The energy is tangible.
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