Regardless of their stance on abortion, most pagans agree on this: If you choose to have an abortion to end an unwanted pregnancy, it should be available in a way that keeps the woman's body safe from harm.
So in the interest of "New Age" medicine and the pagan community, let's throw herbal abortion into the fray. The concept of using herbs to induce an abortion has been around for thousands of years, but both the pros and cons of one of the methods recently received some media attention in The Seattle Weekly.
Pennyroyal might be an attractive alternative to women seeking abortion because of the minimal cost; they can buy herbs to brew an infusion, drink it in the privacy of their own homes and, in a maximum of a few days, the pregnancy will be aborted.
However, the herb is classified as a poison. You may know it from herbal grimoires as a flea killer, sprinkled around the house to rid it of fleas. What it does to fleas it can also do to humans, if taken in a large enough dose. And here's the problem: The dosage needed to abort is very close to the dosage that kills by damaging the user's liver and other organs.
The active ingredient in pennyroyal is pulegone, which destroys liver cells. Symptoms of an overdose include dizziness, cramping, seizures, fainting spells and death. It is during the second stage of an overdose, the cramping stage, that an abortion may be achieved.
Pennyroyal is used in its dried herb form to cause the fetus to separate from the uterus. It is mixed with blue cohosh, which induces contractions to expel the fetus. Steeping the two in water creates an infusion, which the patient drinks.
However, trying to create a clinically perfect, pharmaceutical dosage is tricky. No one can guarantee the strength of the herb being used, which may vary according to the time of year it's harvested and where, geographically, it's grown. Another factor that can affect the strength of the brew is its preparation. Steeping is necessary to extract the active ingredient, but concocting an infusion not quite strong enough will not achieve the desired effect, while one too strong is potentially deadly.
Despite these factors, some women are choosing herbal abortion because they say they would rather face the risks than relinquish control over their bodies to doctors. They appreciate the additional time the process gives them to adjust to their decision, both mentally and physically.
Let's not rule out one of the most important features of a pennyroyal abortion: its cost effectiveness. Compare $10 in herbs to nearly $300 at an abortion clinic, and you may have the real reason why some women are willing to risk their health. The danger here is that this low cost may entice women who are not skilled in using herbs to attempt to use the herbal method. This could cause serious backlash to the pagan community, and that affects us all.
Before accepting herbal abortion as a solution to an unwanted pregnancy, we as a pagan community need more information on how to perform one safely. As it stands now, information is available in women's herbals, and recipes are not guaranteed. We need to have herbal practitioners who are willing to administer safe amounts of the herb to women and to require checkups to make sure that all has gone well with the process.
We need to create support groups and train counselors to deal with the emotional needs of women suffering from post-abortion trauma and stress. We need to create resources for women seeking abortion rituals.
As pagans, we should be careful not to go so far in our wanting to control our bodies that we decide it's more okay to risk harming our bodies than to deal with the imperfections of an already medically effectual system of abortion.
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