ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that since the dawn of time women have been able to get rid of unwanted pregnancies, mainly through abortive drugs. "Potions were widely known and used to contrive sterility and abortion," writes one medievalist. A Strasbourg ordinance of 1605, which prohibited midwives from doing abortions, mentioned only "bloodletting, purgatives, and other drugs." But most evidence suggests that women had little access to instrumental abortions at any stage of pregnancy. Abortion changed in those years from a desperate expedient of unmarried servants and child-weary forty-two-year-olds to a common means of birth control. A complicating factor is that drug abortions also sometimes touch off fever. Lead oleate has a long history in abortion. If Britain's doctors were in conspiracy to deny women access to abortion drugs, the Pharmaceutical Society did not want to go along with them. The third new drug for abortion was apiol, a substance found in oil of parsley.
