Abortifacient
An abortifacient ("that which will cause a miscarriage" from Latin: abortus "miscarriage" and faciens "making") is a substance that induces abortion. This is a nonspecific term which may refer to any number of substances or medications, ranging from herbs[1] to prescription medications.[2]
Common abortifacients used in performing
For thousands of years, writers in many parts of the world have described and recommended herbal abortifacients to women who seek to terminate a pregnancy, although their use may carry risks to the health of the woman.
Medications
Because "abortifacient" is a broad term used to describe a substance's effects on pregnancy, there is a wide range of drugs that can be described as abortifacients or as having abortifacient properties.
The most commonly recommended medication regimen for intentionally inducing abortion involves the use of mifepristone followed by misoprostol 1–2 days later.[5] The use of these medications for the purpose of ending a pregnancy has been extensively studied, and has been shown to be both effective and safe[6] with fewer than 0.4% of patients needing hospitalization to treat an infection or to receive a blood transfusion. This combination is approved for use up to 10 weeks' gestation (70 days after the start of the last menstrual period).[7]
Other drugs with abortifacient properties can have multiple uses. Both
Not all abortifacient agents are taken with the intention to end a pregnancy. Methotrexate, a drug often used for management of rheumatoid arthritis, can induce abortion. For this reason contraception is often advised while using methotrexate for management of a chronic condition.[13]
Sometimes
Some drugs that are not abortifacients, such as levonorgestrel,[16] are referred to as abortifacients.[17]
History
The medical literature of
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]."[19]
The ancient
In the Bible, Biblical scholars and learned Biblical commentators view the ordeal of the bitter water (prescribed for a sotah, or a wife whose husband suspects that she was unfaithful to him) as referring to the use of abortifacients to terminate her pregnancy. The wife drinks "water of bitterness," which, if she is guilty, causes the abortion or miscarriage of a pregnancy she may be carrying.[21][22][23][24][25][26][27] The Biblical scholar Tikva Frymer-Kensky has disputed the interpretation that the ordeal of the bitter water referred to the use of abortifacients.[28]
The medieval Islamic physician
Carl Linnaeus, known as the "father of botany", listed five abortifacients in his 1749 Materia medica.[31]: 124 According to the historian of science Londa Schiebinger, in the 17th and 18th centuries "many sources taken together – herbals, midwifery manuals, trial records, Pharmacopoeia, and Materia medica – reveal that physicians, midwives, and women themselves had an extensive knowledge of herbs that could induce abortion."[31]: 124–125 Schiebinger further writes that "European exploration in the West Indies yielded about a dozen known abortifacients."[31]: 177
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).[32][page needed]
Historically, the
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.[34]: 244 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.[34]: 289–290, 339, 380, 391 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.[35]
Following a tradition among European and English authors, colonial Americans were advised by Benjamin Franklin to use careful measurements in his recipe for an abortifacient that he used as an example in a book he published to teach mathematics and many useful skills.[36]
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."[37]
During the American slavery period, 18th and 19th centuries,
In the late 19th century, women in the UK and US increasingly ingested lead to abort pregnancies, sometimes in the form of pills made of diachylon or lead plaster. It would often cause the women to become ill and could kill them.[39][40]
In the 19th century Madame Restell provided mail-order abortifacients and surgical abortion to pregnant clients in New York.[41]
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."[42]
Quickening
For much of history, ending a pregnancy prior to "quickening" (the moment when a pregnant woman first feels fetal movement) did not have the type of legal or political restrictions and taboos found in the 21st century.[42] Early medieval laws did not discuss abortion prior to quickening. The early Catholic church held that human life began at "ensoulment" (at the time of quickening), a continuation of Roman norms and positions on the use of abortifacients prior to quickening.[43][44][45]
In English law, abortion did not become illegal until 1803.[46] "Women who took drugs before that time [quickening] would describe their actions as 'restoring the menses' or 'bringing on a period'."[47]
At that time, abortion after quickening became subject to the death penalty. In 1837, the significance of quickening was removed, but the death penalty was also abandoned.
References
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- ^ "Medical abortion - Mayo Clinic". www.mayoclinic.org. Retrieved 30 June 2020.
- ^ "Medical abortion - Mayo Clinic". www.mayoclinic.org. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
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- ^ "Medical management of abortion". www.who.int. Retrieved 21 July 2020.
- PMID 22898359.
- ^ Research, Center for Drug Evaluation and (12 April 2019). "Questions and Answers on Mifeprex". FDA.
- ^ "Pitocin - FDA.gov" (PDF). FDA - Drug Safety and Availability.
- ^ PubChem. "Dinoprostone". pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Retrieved 21 July 2020.
- ^ "Dinoprostone (Vaginal Route) Proper Use - Mayo Clinic". www.mayoclinic.org. Retrieved 21 July 2020.
- ^ "Misoprostol: MedlinePlus Drug Information". medlineplus.gov. Retrieved 21 July 2020.
- ^ John Leland: "Abortion Might Outgrow Its Need for Roe v. Wade", The New York Times, 2 October 2005
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- ^ Goodman, Brenda (23 December 2022). "FDA specifies Plan B emergency contraceptive does not cause abortions". CNN. Archived from the original on 13 May 2023. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
- ^ Eigel, Bill (13 March 2024). "Twitter Post". X. Archived from the original on 14 March 2024. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
- ^ Prioreschi, Plinio (1995). "Conception and Abortion in the Greco-Roman World". Vesalius. I (2): 78.
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- ^ Gorvett, Zaria. "The mystery of the lost Roman herb". www.bbc.com. Retrieved 2 September 2020.
- ISBN 9780521873659.
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- ^ Snaith, Norman Henry (1967). Leviticus and Numbers. Nelson. p. 202.
- ISBN 0664237363.
- ^ Brewer, Julius A. (October 1913). "The Ordeal in Numbers Chapter 5". The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures. 30 (1): 46.
- ISBN 0805210490.
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- ^ ISBN 9780674014879.
- ISBN 978-0-949708-33-5.
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- ^ ISBN 0465030297.
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- ^ Farrell, Molly, Ben Franklin Put an Abortion Recipe in His Math Textbook: To colonial Americans, termination was as normal as the ABCs and 123s, Slate, May 5, 2022
- ISBN 0773503560.
- S2CID 145799076.
- ^ Arthur Hall. The increasing use of lead as an abortifacient: a series of thirty cases of plumbism. British Medical Journal, 18 March 1905, pp 584-587, online at NIH web site.
- ^ Troesken, Werner. 2006. The Great Lead Water Pipe Disaster. MIT Press.
- ^ Abbott, Karen. "Madame Restell: The Abortionist of Fifth Avenue". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2 September 2020.
- ^ a b Edwards, Stassa (18 November 2014). "The History of Abortifacients". Jezebel. Retrieved 25 August 2020.
- ^ "Abortion and Catholic Thought: The Little-Told History" Archived 2012-02-18 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood by Kristin Luker, University of California Press
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- ^ "BBC - Ethics - Abortion: Historical attitudes to abortion". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2 September 2020.
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External links
- The dictionary definition of abortifacient at Wiktionary