Reviews (4)

Not the best abortion information
I would not read this if you are looking for abortion information. It is a history book, and it may poison you to use these recipes.

Excellent overview
This is a fine reference book for botanists, pharmacists, academics, writers, and, I suppose, those who want to make the point that abortion and contraception have been around a long, long time.It is clearly written,if a little disorganized, and recipes are given, though the reader is welladvised NOT TO TRY THIS AT HOME.

Excellent!The only comprehensive book on this topic.
John Riddle provides a comprehensive and compelling examination of contraception and abortion through history.An excellent reference, and the only source that shows the historical underpinnings of thecontraceptive and abortive agents we use today.

Reviews (7)

When abortion was a crime
In summary:
*Don't read this book if you are pro-life and you want data to support your beliefs.
*Do read this book if you are pro-choice and you want data to support your beliefs.
*Do read this book if you need to do historical research on abortions and if you need specific examples of how abortions were performed in the early 1900's.

****
Most of the reviewers who have given this book a negative review seem to be pro-life and seem to be basing their opinion off of their political beliefs.I can see why they're disappointed.With a title like:When Abortion Was A Crime, they were probably expecting something that would support their political beliefs.If you want to read a book to support your pro-life beliefs, don't read this one.It is very obviously pro-choice.

Reagan starts off with a premise that although the law and the church were against abortion, women in the general public were not.She covers historical periods both before and after birth control was widely available.Before birth control was available, the majority of women who had abortions were married and already had children.Some of them felt like they had no other option than to abort a child.If they had sex with their husband, they would eventually get pregnant.If they got pregnant, how would they feed their eleventh child?

I read this book for a specific reason.I was trying to find out what a woman experienced if she had an abortion in 1910.This book was perfect for that.It talked about the different options she had available (midwives and doctors), the different procedures she could have gone through.Before I read this book, I thought that all experiences with abortion when abortion was illegal were similar to what women went through in the fifties.Highly illegal, dangerous, and dirty.I was quite surprised to find out that between 1900 and 1920 fewer women died from abortions than in 1950, and that number was adjusted for population growth.The women still died in 1910.It was still a dangerous procedure, and a doctor could still perforate a woman's uterus, pull out her intestines and kill her while performing an abortion.The woman could still die of septic infection.But there were much better places to go earlier in the century because the public was more accepting.

Flawed Premise
Unfortunately this books begins with a flawed premise...There were times in Germany when the slaughtering of Jews was not a crime, according to the state, and times when it was (before and after WWII).Yet in the truest sense, the killing of innocents is always a crime--current political conditions are irrelevant.In the same way, abortion is always a crime, regardless of the current political conditions.

Reviews (5)

VERY DISAPPOINTED
The first few pages of this book are a very thinly disguised pro-choice advertisement.I did not read any further and returned it immediately.If you are a believer who is hurting from having an abortion, I would recommend Forgiven and Set Free or Her Choice to Heal.

Abortion: My Choice, God's Grace
I would like to say that this book should be read by everyone. However, I would have to add "everyone with an open mind." This book "spoke to me" because it also examined the lives of those who did not choose abortion.One particular story was especially noteworthy: The woman asserted that she'd rather stick a needle in her eye than have the baby and give it up for adoption.
[...]
In good conscience, therefore, I recommend this book to others.I salute the women in the book for having the courage to tell their stories. I salute the publisher (a Christian publisher) for having the courage to publish this book.

NEEDED INFORAMTON
I read this book several years ago. I recall thinking how refreshing and helpful this information is & needed by so many women today. It is a relevant book. Initailly, I was put off bythe title and some parts, which discussed God. I remember thinking how brave and lucky these women are. We all trials & tribulations to reveal about our life. I, too, had a pregnancy to deal with when I was 20 years old. I decided to be a single mom. It would have been much easier to make & face my decision after speaking to other women in a similar situation.

Reviews (2)

Don't let right-to-lifers push you around!Get this book!
Every pro-choice woman should own a copy of this book.Besides telling how to find safe, professional abortion providers, this book also how to do your own abortion WITHOUT killing or maiming yourself.

I have only two criticisms: First, a lot of the information about finding an abortion provider may soon be dated, as it lists active organizations which may come and go.Secondly, the book came out in 1992 before the abortifacient use of methotrexate was well-publicized in the USA.Therefore, it has no info about methotrexate, which is a serious defect, because methotrexate is MUCH easier to get hold of than RU-486, both for doctors and non-doctors.

Given the strong likelihood that Roe v. Wade will be overturned soon, this book is MUCH more important today than it was when it was first published in 1992.

Reviews (4)

Liberal? yes. Catholic? certainly not.
[...]
For an excellent rebuttal of Dombrowski and Deltete's pro-abortion position, see the first chapter of Robert P. George's 'The Clash of Orthodoxies.' George, a Roman Catholic, is a professor at Princeton University.

The following is an excerpt from the Seattle Catholic article by Anne Barbeau Gardiner:

The authors make a sharp distinction between the unborn child being "merely human" (i.e., having human parents and genes) and being "a human person in some morally relevant sense." Their most striking and pervasive analogy in support of this distinction is the one between an unborn child and vegetation, as when they say, "The early fetus is obviously alive, as is grass."

In their view, the unborn child is like vegetation until very late in the pregnancy when sentience begins, a term they define as the capacity to perceive pain. They argue that sentience arises only when the central nervous system is functioning. Oh, but what a slippery slope this is! They keep shifting the date when the unborn child attains this mysterious quality. First they say it is hard to tell if there is "a morally considerable being at twenty-four weeks of pregnancy or not until twenty-eight weeks." As it turns out, they are unsure the unborn child has sentience until the eighth month. Even then they declare vaguely that "the fetus becomes morally considerable between twenty-four and thirty-two weeks when sentiency, and then the cerebral cortex, starts to function." The thirty-second week verges on the ninth month!

The authors inform us that performing an abortion on a "nonsentient" child (which, as we have just seen, can be up to the eighth month) is like mowing the lawn. Here are their very words: "It is unclear to us, however, why killing a nonsentient being is rash or precipitous. We do it all the time with equanimity when we mow the grass." Elsewhere they say that an abortion is "like pruning one's rose bush." These are chilling analogies. But do they actually work as analogies? No. For when one prunes a rosebush, it is to make it bloom more abundantly; when one mows the grass, it is to make it grow thicker and stronger. But when one aborts a child, does that child's capacity to grow improve? Not a bit. Little wonder that the authors attack the pro-life film The Silent Scream as being "at best, misleading, and, at worst, fraudulent." This heartrending film shows an unborn child in the throes of an abortion and makes it plain that there is no likeness here to grass or a rosebush. As ultrasounds reveal, a child in the womb reacts to touch after eight weeks, something that grass and a rosebush cannot do at any stage. ...

Deceptive
This piece of pro-abortion propaganda, charading as scholarship, is seriously misleading.Some problems:

1) The authors ignore the anti-abortion position of the early, patristic church.The Didache, Tertullian, and Athenagoras categorically condemn all abortion, regardless of what stage at which it is performed.

2) The authors rightly show that Augustine and Aquinas supported the theory of delayed animation, but they fail to show that these authors also categorically condemned abortion at all stages.Later abortion was more gravely evil than an early abortion (just as first-degree murder is more evil than second-degree murder), but all abortion was condemned as wrong.The canon law of the same period showed the same graded but clear condemnation of all abortion.

3) The authors fail to explain to the reader the absurd biology on which delayed animation was based.Aquinas (following Aristotle), thought the female fetus became "human" later than a male fetus because the woman contributed nothing to conception!He also thought that the early human fetus was some sort of vegetable!No one today disputes the fact that from the moment of conception a huam fetus is purely human.It is not a tiny grapefruit or cat that suddenly becomes human at some later stage of gestation.

4)From the beginning of its existence the Catholic Church has strongly condemned abortion at every stage.While its reasons for condemnation and the degree of condemnation have varied, its position has remained remarkably consistent.Its strengthened opposition to abortion at every stage is completely justified by new knowledge in genetics and gestation.Every human person's history has a radical beginning at the moment of conception.

Editorial Review

Reviews (2)

storied of illegal abortions from the 1920's to the 1960,s.
This is a painful book to read.These are stories of suffering and deathwhich have been kept hidden.Usually the women were young, alone anddesperately poor but also married women overwhelmed with poverty and babiesfelt they had to risk their lives seeking illegal abortions.Birth controlwas illegal in Canada until the 1960`s.Abortionists and others treatedthese women with contempt, sexually attacking them, exploiting theirdesperation financially, and submitting them to crude, dangerous andunsanitary procedures.Before we had antibiotics, many young girls diedfrom infections, or bled to death alone and ashamed.The women tellingthese stories survived (it is unknown how many did not) and never talkedabout it.I recommend this book because we should become aware of themassive female suffering that took place in Canada and is still takingplace all around the world.

Reviews (5)

Enlightening, raises important questions
This book presents information that could turn out to become important for theories of demographic change.

If it is accurate that knowledge about methods of contraception and abortion are not a recent discovery but have been widespread among ancient peoples (which makes sense to me), some important questions arise:

(1) how do we explain the christian-european ignorance of, even rejection of contraception and abortion that was commonplace in the euro-american world until into the 60ies? When and how did this basic human knowledge about contraception and abortion practices disappear and how might this have contributed to the steep growth of the european population in early modern times? Riddle offers some interesting answers here: he interprets the witch trials of early modern times as a strategy against specialists in matters of contraception and abortion (many midwifes were labeled witches and burned), which the church mainly employed to "repopulate" territories that had suffered from extremely high death rates due to the plague epidemics starting in 1348. Eventually, this resulted in the unnaturally high birth rates early european modern times are known for.

(2) how do we explain the surprisingly high birth rates in many contemporary socalled "development countries" and especially in the islamic world that some american strategists see as one of the major background factors of terrorism ("youth bulge")'--- how is this demographic pattern correlated with the history of knowledge about contraception and abortion in these countries? Is there a similar "pronatalist" or anti-contraceptionist policy behind this pattern as was the case in early europe?

Riddle does not ask this question, but if "youth bulge" theories of terrorism and war are confirmed, this could become a major area of investigation critical to the future of western civilization.

It's good, but not...
If you are looking for do-it-yourself abortion information like I was, this is not a good book for that. It is a history book. It's good, but not an abortionary (abortion dictionary).

A work of history which also excels as an herbal
As a person who enjoys the study of social history (how people lived) and herbal medicine, this book exceeded my expectations on both counts.

Riddle is an historian, so the scholarship in the book is historical scholarship. He moves deftly between conflicting theories of demographics and actual family sizes, at home with his contemporaries and able to argue his somewhat novel opinion on a level playing field. Not surprisingly, historians tend to go along with modern medical thought that there were no effective systems of personal or professional health care prior to our own allopathic tradition in the past few centuries. Herbalists, homeopaths and the like are still fighting for legitimacy against exactly this mindset.

What surprised and delighted me was the thoroughness of Riddle's information on the herbs in question. It must be noted that he does NOT provide recipes for readers to use at home. He isn't playing (herbal) doctor. Regardless, a person with some experience in herbalism or access to alternate texts can easily take the list of herbs from this book and find appropriate dosage and other how to information from that other source--including the important caveat that herbs are not always safe and shouldn't be taken without professional advice or lots of research. Riddle's emphasis is on pointing out which plants have been indicated, by whom in the ancient world, and what science has (or has not) done to test for actual efficacy.

One interesting side note for readers who allow for the possible effectiveness of today's most revolutionary complementary medicine modalities is Riddle's reporting of the fact that, historically, chants (magic) were often listed together with the herbs (medicine) in any given herbal recipe. Riddle is careful and respectful of the potential for narrow-mindedness when he admits that, to our Western minds, there can be no believing in the usefulness of the magic side of the equation, but he makes no disparaging remarks and he allows for future scientific work to prove said "magic" effective. Of course, to a modern practitioner of Reiki or any other mental/spiritual healing system, it is certainly possible to suppose the intent of the healer and/or patient was a necessary or beneficent part of the ancient cures.

Reviews (1)

Reviews (4)

Sad rationalization
Its a sad rationalization of a series of horrible decisions.The fact the one writer says that having a child would have been far worse than the pain she experienced having an abortion is saddening.How could she not value another's life.It is a story of selfishness.Those should take a deeper look at what they are doing in supporting the death of a baby. ...
God bless.

great stories from those who've experienced abortion...
This book is a great read for background information and history on the women's right movement and abortion becoming legal in the United States. Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. Themes about sadness and regret are very common and validating. It also discusses abortion from the man's perspective- one lost his mom! GOOOOOOOOOOOD book!

Reviews (3)

Wonderful reading
This book takes a historical (even if partly rose colored) look back at the days before Roe vs Wade, and a group of women with a commitment to women's self determination

Although it is still a radical idea in our day(which accounts for the stalking of patients, bombing of Clinics and thekilling of medical personel)these women realized that control over one'sreproductive system was essential for survival.Women who foundthemselves pregnant had very limited options (there were no laws againstfiring pregnant workers or dismissing students and child support paymentswere very lax in enforcement by modern standards)and Jane sought to changethat system. The change is even more remarkable in light of the fact thatmany of these women were college students like myself.

Because this bookis so well written, you can almost feel the excitement and terror as manycollective members were changing the system. Understandably, the use ofpseudonyms was a necesitity both then and now.

Even though we know thatabortion was legalized in Roe the mood is so well set in the book,"Never Again" rings throughout the pages. Although Jane membersdo not regret what they did, it is obvious that they do not want anothergeneration to resort to such extra-legal methods. One generation was oncetoo many.

In addition to individual reading and research, this bookmight be useful for a course on American women's history and/or a generalcourse in the 1960's-1970s.

An interesting look at pre-legalization abortion
This is a must-read for feminists, pro-choicers, pro-lifers, and activists involved in the area of women's health.Information on this book's subject matter is frequently hard to come by, and this is told from the perspectiveof someone who was there as events unfolded."The Story of Jane"is a striking example of how women can care for eachother in traumaticsituations, and educate their sisters about their bodies, in a way that theoften too clinical medical profession does not manage.An interesting lookat grass-roots organizing and the politics of the pre-Roe era.

Reviews (2)

Parting the Gilded Curtain
We are so dazzled by the gilded Victorian that we often refuse to look at the evidence of ordinary human needs and desires in the 19th century.Ms Brodie examines 100 years of attitudes and practices regarding an importantaspect of marital reality -- the need to limit family size.The result isa fascinating examination of a topic that is usually ignored and oftenconsidered either non-existent or unimportant. Ms Brodie's energeticpresentation is both analytical and scholarly with conclusions carefullysupported by contemporary documentation.She also adds delightful textualflavor and dimension by threading excerpts from diaries and lettersthroughout her narrative.

The examination of Mary Pierce Poor's diary isillustrative.This unusual journal carefully records menstrual cycles andsexual contacts with Mary's husband Henry Varnum Poor from 1845 to 1868. When considering sexual abstinence as a birth control method, Ms. Brodiesees little evidence of this practice in the marital lives of the Poors,but does think that in 1851 they tried a physical separation for the summerto prevent conception.She quotes from Mary's diary to prove that this wasnot a happy solution."I do not like to be long separated from you. We are happiest together, do not let us try absence again.I want to bewith you, wherever you are, the rest of the summer, the rest of mylife."Obviously, Mary enjoyed her conjugal pleasures, even if shewas continuously worried about another pregnancy.

Overall this book isa extraordinary peak into the marital mores and realities of the Victorianperiod.It leaves no doubt that our ancestors grappled with the issues offamily limitation and sexuality as rigorously as we do today.Terrificread.Great reference.Wonderful information.