"Madame Restell" by Jennifer Wright
[The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist]
The first clear written description of abortion dates back to 1550 BCE in Egypt
It's a tiresome and, unfortunately, still true fact that, if men like something a woman does, they assume another man must have helped her do it.
Whatever one things of her actions, she deserves the dignity of autonomy so often denied to women in history.
No one in any period of history has ever had as much sex as men thought briefly unchaperoned nineteenth-century women had.
Men in America are supposed to be ambitious. A woman doing the same was, and still is, perceived as defying her natural supportive and maternal nature.
There was, one gathers, a great deal of concern about women turning into prostitutes during this era, and very little effort to address the actual conditions that made women pursue sex work.
women have tiny skulls that only contain love, household skills, and/or hysteria
Doctors sometimes didn't tell women they had syphilis, because by doing so they would reveal their husbands' adultery.
The problem was that, having left women's reproductive health issues and childbirth largely to women for centuries, doctors found they were not very good at treating them.
Abortives:
Pennyroyal
Rue
Tansy
Gingerroot
Hartshorn
Ergot of rye
Cantharides