Abortion in ancient China with TCM and acupuncture was unreliable – most women resorted to physically injuring themselves, as in one harrowing story
- A pregnant mother whose husband was executed for high treason went to drastic lengths to abort her unborn ‘traitor’s’ child
- The scandal of an unexplained pregnancy would cost women their lives in certain regions of China in the past, often by some form of public lynching
On June 24, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling that recognised an American woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, a landmark ruling that spearheaded the legalisation of the procedure across the US.
Now, it is certain or likely that half of the country’s 50 states will criminalise the intentional termination of a pregnancy.
The pro-choice versus pro-life debate, together with other issues such as the right to bear arms, are so deeply divisive in the United States that the very name of the country has become an oxymoron.
The intensity of these debates and the intractability of the battle lines that are drawn over these issues are aspects of American exceptionalism that the rest of the world can never fully understand.
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A harrowing story from China’s past illustrates the pain, both physical and mental, and the desperation suffered by women who wish to terminate their unwanted pregnancies, for any number of reasons.
The mother of Southern Qi prime minister Xu Xiaosi (AD453-499) was already pregnant with him when her husband was executed for high treason. She wanted to remarry but carrying an unborn child, and a traitor’s child at that, made it difficult for her to do so.
She tried various methods to abort her pregnancy, including deliberately rolling herself off the bed onto the floor multiple times, striking her belly repeatedly with a wooden stick used for washing clothes, and ingesting a variety of substances that supposedly caused miscarriages.
Despite her violent and dangerous actions, the tenacious baby survived and Xu Xiaosi was eventually born.
Traditional Chinese medical literature and compendia of medicines contain information about various plant- and animal-based substances, to be taken orally, that are supposed to help terminate a pregnancy. These include saffron, musk, the common purslane (Portulaca oleracea), as well as poisons such as mercury, and even strychnine and arsenic.
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There are also records of abortion by acupuncture. The teenaged Liu Yu (AD463-477), the penultimate emperor of the short-lived Liu-Song dynasty, encountered a pregnant woman in his perambulations and guessed that she was carrying a female baby.
He turned to his physician Xu Wenbo, who disagreed and said that she was carrying twins. The clearly psychotic boy-emperor wanted to cut open the womb of the pregnant woman to find out.
Seeing that there was no way to save all the lives involved, Xu sought to save at least one, the mother’s. He proposed to induce miscarriage by inserting needles into two acupuncture points on the woman’s body, which he did. It was as Xu said: the woman was carrying twins.
These so-called medicines and methods were unreliable in terminating pregnancies; some of the highly toxic minerals that expectant women took were often fatal.
Besides, the vast majority of women in premodern China did not have ready access to these remedies. Most resorted to physically injuring themselves like the mother of Xu Xiaosi, throwing themselves from furniture or pounding their bellies with their fists and other implements.
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In certain regions of China in certain periods in the past, the scandal of an unexplained pregnancy or one that was not sanctioned by matrimony would cost women their lives, either at the hands of their own family or by some form of public lynching.
The drastic and dangerous methods they used to terminate their pregnancies reflected their sheer desperation.
