Just The Story: Early Abortion Methods
Just The Story: Early Abortion Methods
All the story, no horny dude
This post contains sensitive content on abortion. Reader discretion is advised.
This is a companion piece to:
Abortion. It’s a controversial topic now, but it hasn’t always been. In many societies it was thought of as women’s healthcare, as it should be. Medically we’ve advanced to offer safe abortions, but with abortion access limited in some areas, some of these less safe methods could make a resurgence. Methods, that often injure or even kill the women.
(Please note that this is not medical advice and I do not recommend trying these methods.)
The Evers Papyrus (1550 BCE Egypt) contains the first written description of abortion. It was a medical text with ways in which to perform them. It advised to put warm oil and fat into the vagina. If that didn’t work there was inserting a pessary (looks like a tampon) into the vagina. A pessary was made from fruit and honey. It would ferment and produce lactic acid, which kills sperm.
There are lots of other versions of horrifying pessaries. In the Kahun Papyrus it suggested putting a crocodile poop mixed with dough pessary into the vagina. Unfortunately, scientists say that the reason the pessaries worked is because they caused infection, so, the woman often died too.
The Romans used castoreum to induce abortions. Castoreum comes from a little sac on a beaver’s butt. Women would inhale the scent of it and it was supposed to cause uterine contractions, but scientists say that wouldn’t have worked.
They did have methods that worked. With these ancient texts it’s confusing because it was actually women that provided a lot of the herbal things for abortion, but the texts are written by men. We don’t entirely know what midwives actually did but there is record they were successful.
The Romans and Greeks also used the herbs and other plants. A very popular herb choice was Silphium. Interestingly this was used both as a contraceptive to prevent pregnancy and as a way to induce abortion. Supposedly it worked! Unfortunately this plant went extinct around 2nd century BC.
Certainly it must have been better than other ancient remedies. In a book, Hippocrates suggested shaking the women. Or, giving her medicines that make her poop violently and/or throw up.
In the Edo period in Japan (1603-1868), it’s documented that women might drink similar poisonous or herbal concoctions other societies did. However, they also tried things like acupuncture, cold water immersion and inserting sharp rocks into their vaginas. They might hire someone to stab the fetus, often killing them too, or throw themselves from high places.
The most common abortion inducing suggestions throughout many societies seem to be natural choices like Queen Anne’s lane, Pennyroyal, rue and ginger root.
These were popular and widely used in early America too. There’s a 1768 book by Benjamin Franklin full of recipes, and one of them is for abortion. In the book he says it’s for young unmarried women.
Also in America, enslaved Black women would use turpentine for abortions. The enslavers, having noticed this, would change their turpentine components in a way to try to stop them, because less children reduced the value of their “property”.
There’s certainly a lot I haven’t mentioned, but this covers the basics of what women have endured in order to have healthcare, and what horrors we could face in the future.
Next piece I’ll be returning to the topic to cover Madame Restell and early abortion in America. See you there. 😉