Harvard PressIn Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance, John M. Riddle showed, through extraordinary scholarly sleuthing, that women from ancient Egyptian times to the fifteenth century had relied on an extensive pharmacopoeia of herbal abortifacients and contraceptives to regulate fertility. In Eve’s Herbs, Riddle explores a new question: If women once had access to effective means of birth control, why was this knowledge lost to them in modern times?
Beginning with the testimony of a young woman brought before the Inquisition in France in 1320, Riddle asks what women knew about regulating fertility with herbs and shows how the new intellectual, religious, and legal climate of the early modern period tended to cast suspicion on women who employed “secret knowledge” to terminate or prevent pregnancy. Knowledge of the menstrual-regulating qualities of rue, pennyroyal, and other herbs was widespread through succeeding centuries among herbalists, apothecaries, doctors, and laywomen themselves, even as theologians and legal scholars began advancing the idea that the fetus was fully human from the moment of conception.
Drawing on previously unavailable material, Riddle reaches a startling conclusion: while it did not persist in a form that was available to most women, ancient knowledge about herbs was not lost in modern times but survived in coded form. Persecuted as “witchcraft” in centuries past and prosecuted as a crime in our own time, the control of fertility by “Eve’s herbs” has been practiced by Western women since ancient times.
Yesterday, an amiga-in-law initiated this text discussion about yesterday’s unanimous US Supreme Court abortion pill mifepristone decision.
HerPlease tell me how SCOTUS can unanimously rule the abortion pill can stay on the market and yet overturn Roe?MeRead online just now that SCOTUS ruled the plaintive antiabortionist doctors didn’t have legal standing to being the lawsuit, and I agree.When the SCOTUS split decision overturned Roe, the majority said each state decides its own abortion policy, so a state can ban the abortion pill within its own borders?HerWhy was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg not thrilled with the original Roe decision back when?MeJust now read online RBG said Roe should have been decided on gender equality, not on right to privacy.
This In my Apple newsfeed this morning sums up the SCOTUS decision and what might happen next:
19thIn the ruling, the high court’s justices said that the collection of anti-abortion physicians challenging the drug’s availability had not shown they had been directly harmed by the federal Food and Drug Administration’s 2016 and 2021 decisions to expand the use of mifepristone. As a result, the court’s majority said, they did not have the right to file suit.
“The federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs’ concerns about FDA’s actions,” said the opinion, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “The plaintiffs may present their concerns and objections to the President and FDA in the regulatory process, or to Congress and the President in the legislative process. And they may also express their views about abortion and mifepristone to fellow citizens, including in the political and electoral process.”
Mifepristone is used in combination with another drug, misoprostol, to induce medication abortions. The regimen, which data shows is very safe and effective in terminating a pregnancy, has surged in popularity in the past few years, and now accounts for more than 60 percent of all abortions.
It has also become a key tool for people seeking to circumvent state abortion bans. Because these medications can be prescribed through telehealth appointments, health care providers in a handful of states where abortion is legal have begun to mail the pills to patients in states with bans.
As a result, the anti-abortion movement has prioritized limiting access to mifepristone, which was approved by the FDA in 2000. The case at hand, filed in Texas, originally sought to reverse the drug’s approval altogether. The high court, citing how much time had passed, heard only a narrower set of questions: whether to reverse a 2021 decision that allowed the drug to be prescribed through telemedicine, and a 2016 one that approved its use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy instead of seven and allowed it to be prescribed by health care providers other than physicians.
A ruling in the doctors’ group’s favor would have banned mifepristone’s use in telemedicine, and made it only available through in-person appointments. Patients would have had to make three visits to a provider — a requirement that could be prohibitive, especially for those who must travel long distances, or who are unable to secure time off or child care for three separate days. It also would have limited prescriptions to doctors, rather than nurses or physicians assistants.
Thursday’s decision means that the pill will remain accessible in states where abortion is legal. Still, the decision is hardly the end of the fight over medication abortion, either on a state or federal level.
Abortion is mostly or entirely outlawed in 14 states. Others have enacted restrictions on the procedure, including six-week bans in three states, or outlawing abortion through telemedicine.
In advance of the Supreme Court’s ruling, some states sought to criminalize the drugs used in medication abortion, including Louisiana, which in May issued a law declaring both “controlled dangerous substances.”
In oral arguments this March, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas both singled out an 1873 anti-obscenity law called the Comstock Act, which has not been enforced in decades but was never repealed, and which some hope to use as the basis for a national abortion ban. The law forbids the mailing of material “intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use. Alito referred to the Comstock Act as a “prominent provision” in the criminal code, though it has only recently become a commonly-discussed vehicle for an abortion ban.
But neither the court’s main ruling nor its sole concurrence — written by Thomas and also focused on the question of legal standing — mentioned the 19th century law.
Still, abortion opponents, including former advisers of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, have suggested that if elected, Trump could leverage the law to ban abortion.
In a statement, President Joe Biden — who has made abortion rights a central plank of his re-election bid — also emphasized the ongoing political fight over mifepristone.
“Women can continue to access this medication — approved by the FDA as safe and effective more than 20 years ago,” Biden said. But, he also said, “Today’s decision does not change the fact that the fight for reproductive freedom continues. It does not change the fact that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, and women lost a fundamental freedom.”Other cases challenging the FDA’s decision to allow mifepristone to be prescribed online could also make their way back to the high court. Attorneys general in Idaho, Kansas and Missouri have raised similar challenges, and during oral arguments, Alito indicated that he at least would be open to hearing their arguments. On Thursday, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey — who both oppose abortion — said they intend to move forward with those challenges, the Kansas City Star reported.
What all along flummoxed this old lawyer, who clerked for a US District Judge, is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the liberal SCOTUS Justices in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, June 24, 2022 , which overturned, Roe v. Wade, did not get into a time machine and bring back to the future herbal abortion practices in Colonial America, which were described in Benjamin Franklin’s book, The American Instructor.
The Dobbs majority opinion was written by right wing Christian SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito, who said in his opinion that there is no history of Colonial America women having a right to abortion.
Perhaps Justice Alito learned his American history from FOX News?
Consider this from National Public Radio:
For Ben Franklin, abortion was basic arithmetic
MAY 16, 20224:37 PM ET
HEARD ON ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
By
Emily FengNPR's Emily Feng speaks with Molly Farrell from The Ohio State University on why Ben Franklin included instructions for at-home abortions in his reference book, The American Instructor.EMILY FENG, HOST:
Bear with me as we go back in time, way back to Philadelphia in 1748. Benjamin Franklin put quill to paper that year, so to speak, adapting a popular British math textbook for the American colonies. He told readers his goal was to update the book with matters, quote, "more immediately useful to Americans." Among those matters, the founding father added a clear and easy-to-follow guide for an at-home abortion drawn from a medical pamphlet written by a doctor in Virginia. So how does that square with a leaked Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, specifically the contention that, quote, "a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation's histories and traditions"?
Molly Farrell studies early American literature as an associate professor at the Ohio State University, which means she knows a lot about the nation's histories and traditions. She wrote about Franklin's abortion how-to for Slate and joins us now. Welcome, Molly.
MOLLY FARRELL: Thanks, Emily. It's great to be here.
FENG: Start by telling us a little bit about the original version of this textbook, which was called "The Instructor." What was in this book, and what was its purpose?
FARRELL: So "The Instructor" was by George Fisher, who is a pseudonym. We don't know who wrote it. It was a really popular catch-all manual published in London. I believe it went through eight or nine editions in London. And you could learn to read on it. It had the alphabet in it. It had basic arithmetic, recipes. And it had a how-to book on farriery, which is the care for horses' hooves.
So books were expensive at the time. And if you just had money to buy one or two books in your home, the Bible and maybe something else, this would be a great reference manual.
FENG: And Franklin saw this as useful for an American audience, but he wanted to make it more relevant for the colonies. What changes did he make to this textbook?
FARRELL: Yes. So he called it "The American Instructor." In the arithmetic section and the word problems, he changed the place names - made them Boston and Jamaica instead of London and Flanders. He added a little section on colonial history. And then the biggest change you can see from the title page is that he swapped out the big section on farriery and a medical textbook that was from London, and he inserted it with a Virginia medical handbook from 1734 called "Every Man His Own Doctor: The Poor Planter's Physician."
FENG: And what was in that section of the book?
FARRELL: So that's what I was most interested in. So I don't know if you grew up with these. You'd have a book around that just had, like, home remedies. You don't need to call your doctor for this. You can take care of it yourself. So I was looking at all the different entries in there, and there was one that was pretty long and pretty obvious. And it was called "For The Suppression Of The Courses." And I was reading this, and it comes right after entries for fever or dropsy. So those are - the entries were listed as problems that need to be solved. So fever, here's how to solve it. Gleet or gout, here's how to solve it. Suppression of the courses, here's how to solve it. And the word courses, from about the 15th to the 19th century - I looked in the dictionary - it means menses. So it means your period. So that's a missed period.
So I thought, OK, how do you solve the problem of a missed period? And it says this is a common complaint among unmarried women that they miss their period. And then it starts to prescribe basically all of the best-known herbal abortifacients and contraceptives that were circulating at the time. It's just sort of a greatest hits of what 18th-century herbalists would have given a woman who wanted to end a pregnancy early in her pregnancy. And that's what, by the way, this abortifacient recipe would really be for was really early. It talks about, like, make sure you start to take it a week before you expect to be out of order. So take it before you've even missed that period, and it will be most effective. So it's very explicit, very detailed, also very accurate for the time in terms of what was known at the time for how to end a pregnancy pretty early on.
And then at the end, it just really comes out swinging and lets you know this is definitely related to sex 'cause it says, you know, also women - you know, in order to prevent this complaint at the end - so prevention for next time - don't long for pretty fellows or any other trash whatsoever.
FENG: You write in your article for Slate that Ben Franklin's instructions for an at-home abortion were actually taken from a medical pamphlet that was written by someone else. That seems to suggest that this knowledge was quite common. How much other documentation out there do we have from this time about abortion?
FARRELL: That's a good question. I mean, so, you know, if you kind of were in the market in Philadelphia and some women were chatting, what were they talking about? And particularly when you think about herbal remedies and herbal remedies for, as it says, female infirmities in the book, that's going to be something that's even less likely to enter into print because we have - midwives are taking care of that. Women's literacy rates were lower. They're not writing medical textbooks, but they have all this knowledge.
So what John Tennant did, this Virginia handbook - he tried to make it a really American herbal. And one way that typically that was done was stealing herbal knowledge from indigenous people in Virginia and from enslaved Africans. A lot of early American scientists, that's where they got their knowledge, and then they put it into print and called it their own.
What's interesting about what Franklin did is that he made sure to find a very American and actually very detailed, very accurate, according to the time, and very explicit herbal remedy and then promote it. You know, he was platforming it, basically. He circulated it loudly. He appended it into a volume that he was saying, this is basically all the knowledge that every American should know. And you should know your reading. And you should know your writing. And you should know home remedies that include how to have an abortion if you need to.
FENG: If this knowledge about the, quote, "suppression of the courses" back then was just as commonplace then as learning how to add or to spell, then how was abortion conceptualized? Was it considered taboo?
FARRELL: Clearly for Benjamin Franklin, one of the architects of our nation, and for the people that bought his book, which went through reprintings all the way throughout the 18th century, "The American Instructor" was hugely popular. It was absolutely not taboo. This was not banned. We don't even have any records of people objecting to this. It didn't really bother anybody that a typical instructional manual could include material like this, could include - address explicitly to a female audience, making sure they had all the herbals available to them that their local midwife might have as well and just putting that right into print. It just wasn't something to be remarked upon. It was just a part of everyday life.
FENG: These days, people who oppose abortion will talk about the rights of the fetus. Was that part of the public conversation at the time Ben Franklin was adapting this textbook?
FARRELL: I really haven't seen much of that at all. I mean, there's certainly concerns about women's sexual behavior. There's certainly concerns about morality and immorality and also whether or not that women would try to conceal what happens.
It's really about regulation of women. And that, I think, we can trace all the way right up to today and really see this attack on abortion rights as completely contiguous with that. It goes under the guise of supposedly protecting embryos and fetuses. But what happens is that it really damages and threatens women's health and constrains the lives of anyone who could become pregnant.
FENG: Molly Farrell is an associate professor of English at the Ohio State University. Thank you.
FARRELL: Thank you so much, Emily.
(SOUNDBITE OF SIMPLY THREE'S "RAIN")
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Consider this from the United States of America’s first legal document, the Declaration of Independence:
Action of Second Continental Congress,
July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Ass-u-me-ing Nature’s God and the Creator of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence knew all women also had certain unalienable rights, even if those men did not know of such unalienable rights :-), one of Colonial women’s unalienable rights was to use the herbs Nature and Nature's God created to regulate their menses and terminate their unwanted pregnancies :-).
Now if Justice Alito, FOX News, and the American Christian right have a problem with that, perhaps they should file a class action lawsuit against Nature and Nature’s God in a United States District Court? But if they do, would they have legal standing? For, how are they injured by a woman they do not know using herbs created by Nature and Nature’s God to regulate her menses and terminate her unwanted pregnancy?
I assure Justice Alito that he has no standing in God’s Court to file such a lawsuit, because God created everything, according to Justice Alito’s Bible :-), and Justice Alito has no jurisdiction over God- and Justice Alito is not a woman, right, Justice Bader? :-
Another way to look at all of this is mifepristone is Nature and Nature’s God's back up plan, right Justice Ginsberg? :)
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