This text traces the history of contraception and abortifacients from ancient Egypt to the 17th century, and discusses the scientific merit of the ancient remedies and why this knowledge about fertility control was gradually lost over the course of the Middle Ages.

In Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance, John M. Riddle showed, through extraordinary scholarly sleuthing, that women from ancient Egyptian times to the fifteenth century had relied on an extensive pharmacopoeia of herbal abortifacients and contraceptives to regulate fertility. In Eve’s Herbs, Riddle explores a new question: If women once had access to effective means of birth control, why was this knowledge lost to them in modern times? Beginning with the testimony of a young woman brought before the Inquisition in France in 1320, Riddle asks what women knew about regulating fertility with herbs and shows how the new intellectual, religious, and legal climate of the early modern period tended to cast suspicion on women who employed “secret knowledge” to terminate or prevent pregnancy. Knowledge of the menstrual-regulating qualities of rue, pennyroyal, and other herbs was widespread through succeeding centuries among herbalists, apothecaries, doctors, and laywomen themselves, even as theologians and legal scholars began advancing the idea that the fetus was fully human from the moment of conception. Drawing on previously unavailable material, Riddle reaches a startling conclusion: while it did not persist in a form that was available to most women, ancient knowledge about herbs was not lost in modern times but survived in coded form. Persecuted as “witchcraft” in centuries past and prosecuted as a crime in our own time, the control of fertility by “Eve’s herbs” has been practiced by Western women since ancient times.

This multidisciplinary review of abortion is invaluable reading for clinicians and other care providers in the area of women's health.

In the Age of Revolution, how did American women conceive their lives and marital obligations? By examining the attitudes and behaviors surrounding the contentious issues of family, contraception, abortion, sexuality, beauty, and identity, Susan E. Klepp demonstrates that many women--rural and urban, free and enslaved--began to radically redefine motherhood. They asserted, or attempted to assert, control over their bodies, their marriages, and their daughters' opportunities. Late-eighteenth-century American women were among the first in the world to disavow the continual childbearing and large families that had long been considered ideal. Liberty, equality, and heartfelt religion led to new conceptions of virtuous, rational womanhood and responsible parenthood. These changes can be seen in falling birthrates, in advice to friends and kin, in portraits, and in a gradual, even reluctant, shift in men's opinions. Revolutionary-era women redefined femininity, fertility, family, and their futures by limiting births. Women might not have won the vote in the new Republic, they might not have gained formal rights in other spheres, but, Klepp argues, there was a women's revolution nonetheless.

At head of title: Sage-Femme Collective.

Access to high quality abortion care is essential to women’s health, as evidenced by the dramatic decrease in pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality since the legalization of abortion in the United States, and by high rates of maternal death and complications in those countries where abortion is still provided under unsafe conditions. The past two decades have brought important advances in abortion care as well as increasing cross-disciplinary use of abortion technologies in women’s health care. Abortion is an important option for pregnant women who have serious medical conditions or fetal abnormalities, and fetal reduction techniques are now well-integrated into infertility treatment to reduce the risks of multiple pregnancies resulting from assisted reproductive technologies. Management of Unintended and Abnormal Pregnancy: Comprehensive Abortion Care is the textbook of the National Abortion Federation, and serves as the standard, evidence-based reference text in abortion care. This state-of-the-art textbook provides a comprehensive overview of the public health implications of unsafe abortion and reviews the best surgical and medical practices for pregnancy termination, as well as managing ectopic and other abnormal pregnancies. Management of Unintended and Abnormal Pregnancy: Comprehensive Abortion Care is the leading source for a comprehensive understanding of issues related to unintended and abnormal pregnancy. This textbook: is authored by internationally-known leaders in women's health care; addresses unintended pregnancy and abortion from historical, legal, public health, clinical, and quality care perspectives; includes chapters on pregnancy loss, ectopic pregnancy, gestational trophoblastic disease, and multifetal pregnancy reduction; covers treatment of pregnancies in the first and second trimester by both medical and surgical techniques; and provides resources for clinical, scientific, and social support for the abortion provider and patient.