Women have always had abortions, only the method changes

Induced abortion is as old as mankind. It is not an invention of feminists and the desire for reproductive freedom is not a modern demand either. Here we tell you what his story has been like and where the idea of criminalizing him came from.

The Hammurabi code (1795-1750 BC) and the Assyrian laws (1114-1076 BC) were the first regulatory systems. They contain the first record of convicting an abortion caused by beatings by the husband “If a man beats a man's daughter and causes her to have an abortion, he will pay ten silver shekels for her abortion” and a voluntary interruption of pregnancy: “If a woman loses the fruit of her gut on her own initiative, they prove it and prove her guilt, that they impalate her and not bury her. “If it dies after losing the fruit of its entrails, let them impalate it and not bury it”.

Despite the restriction, women have since ancient times found ways to abort. Just as ancient midwives and wise women enabled births, they were also able to stop them. One of the oldest known plants with abortifacient effects is Poleo. An herb of the mint species that generates contractions in the uterus, since its active ingredients stimulate blood flow to the pelvis. Due to its effect, even today doctors prohibit taking infusions with this plant during pregnancy.

The first historical record of this plant and its abortive function occurred in Greece. Hippocratic medicine called this plant “the herb of birth” and was widely marketed. In Greece and later Rome, abortion did not arouse any moral judgment because of a basic premise: the fetus had no soul, so it was not a subject of discussion. In “The Republic”, Plato stated that even abortion was necessary in the case of incest or when the parents were elderly people. His successor, Aristotle, defended abortion as an effective method of controlling the family. Although it must be said that the reasons for this support were merely eugenic and never for the welfare or agency of women -since they were not even active subjects of the police-.

Another of the first registered abortive plants was Silphium or laserpicium, a species that became extinct in less than a century due to its multiple uses, including its abortive capacity. It grew in Sirena, now Libya, and it was so important that the Romans made reserves of it and fenced off their plantations. It is currently known as “the first pill the day after”, since Soranus of Hephaestus, a Greek doctor, prescribed its monthly consumption to prevent pregnancy and a higher dose if it was already presumed to be so.

Concoctions made from emenagogues or herbs to cause menstruation such as poleo, silphium, ruda, mugwort and sabine were the first abortive methods used until medical intervention in the middle of the 17th century. This resource was crossed by the community of women and their knowledge. However, there were many deaths, complications and women who became infertile in this process.

With the arrival of modernity, the scientific method and the evolution of medicine, those practices that were far from verifiable by an academic and class elite were persecuted and rejected. All knowledge about contraceptives was not only marred and forgotten, but openly curtailed by new values.

The persecution of witches and the beginning of the Catholic Church's pitched war over the control of our bodies were not isolated events. It was not until the 13th century when the most important and misogynistic theologian of the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, who said that women are defective and unborn, that the church began to take severe measures to persecute women who aborted. By stating that every conjugal act must have procreation as its sole purpose, he exacerbated control over the ways in which women terminated their pregnancy.

Since verifying an induced abortion was not easy at that time, new measures were taken: the church demanded the inclusion of male doctors in delivery spaces and thus began to alienate and control women who gave birth and midwives.

Silvia Federici, in “The Caliban and the Witch”, describes that this change in birth dynamics marked a historic inflection: in the event of an emergency, the life of the fetus would be prioritized over the life of the mother. This was decisive because it was previously inconceivable. There was universal agreement on the belonging of the fetus to the woman's body and I achieve the prioritization of her health over the latter.

In this same era of persecution of ancient knowledge, rituals and practices that they categorized as witchcraft, a new abortive element took center stage: The ergot fungus. Ergot alkaloids increase the motor activity of the uterus. At the time, midwives used it to induce abortions and treat early pregnancies. Later in the 18th century, obstetrics would also use it to facilitate births because of its toxic properties. It is said that midwives ground ergot and turned it into a gray powder. Used promptly, it helped to cause the termination of pregnancy and when you were close to giving birth it helped to cause the contractions necessary to give birth.

But as with the emenagogues, the cost of having an ergot abortion was to lose vision, hallucinate or die, because in the end it was a poison that women were willing to take with all the risks it entailed.

The final milestone of this reunion on the ways in which women interrupt our pregnancy comes with the accidental discovery of abortion pills in Brazil, a medical innovation that to this day has saved thousands of lives and provided access to our right.

In the mid-80s, impoverished black women in Brazil discovered through the side effects of a medication for gastroduodenal ulcers the safest and most effective way to abort from home. The Cytotec or Misoprostol arrived in Brazil in 1986 and when it was discovered that the side effect of this medication was an induced abortion, its operation spread rapidly from voice to voice.

Deaths and complications from clandestine abortions in Brazil were so high that doctors before the 90s authorized the use of this medication among poor and middle class women. The doctors, despite knowing the illegality of their prescription, bet on practicality: it was between treating complications with infections that led to sterility or death, or to warning of heavy bleeding that was much more controllable.

Ten years later, the Mifepristone or RU-486, a drug that was created only to cause abortions, but which is still much more restricted today. Their combination increases the percentage of effectiveness of abortions. Mifepristone works by blocking progesterone, the hormone that allows pregnancy, while misoprostol helps the uterus to dilate.

In an ideal scenario where abortion is not prohibited and the State guarantees full access to all women, the combination of these two pills increases the effectiveness of induced abortion. The truth is that in Latin America only eight countries have free abortion. The impact and legacy of the discovery and dissemination of misoprostol as an abortion drug by Brazilian women crossed borders and positioned this medication as the most effective method in countries where it is legal and where it is not.

Misoprostol and Mifepristone can be used up to the 12th week of pregnancy. It is a safe, accessible method that can be done from home, avoiding revictimization and violence carried out by institutions, especially in countries where it is still illegal. Abortion pills are the current legacy of all this historical narrative where women found ways to choose to become mothers despite a system that has always controlled our bodies. Currently, the consequences of the incessant search for ways to terminate a pregnancy have fewer consequences and deaths than those experienced by women before, but the inventiveness and collectivization surrounding this need is cross-cutting.

We fight for a future where female insight to decide about our bodies is just a story of the past, so that efficient and safe abortion methods are universal, so that this decision does not cost the lives of more than 47,000 women annually and so that menagogues are never a choice in the face of the desperation of an unwanted pregnancy.