Pennyroyal

I watched an episode of Murdoc Mysteries and the topic at hand was the various ways that women used to try to end pregnancies when abortion was illegal. The woman who died had ingested Pennyroyal in extract form and bled to death. Pennyroyal, in very small doses, can be used for various things, but it can be toxic to humans (and animals and insects, actually).

I find it interesting how the perception of abortion doctors can change depending on how people view the topic. Last year when they faked those videos about Planned Parenthood selling body parts, they played on the narrative that anti-choice people seem to believe .  . . that abortion doctors are these horrible people who prey on young women who have no idea what is happening.

I believe this is one of the reasons why Oklahoma passed a law to educate everyone on what happens during pregnancy, as a way to 'create an abortion-free society.' They seemed convinced that people don't grasp what is happening during pregnancy, which is complete bullshit.

Listen, we all understand that a baby is growing. I really don't think any woman goes to get an abortion because she thinks there is a lump of molding clay inside her body that needs to be removed. We get it. Throughout history, women have ALWAYS understood this. And yet, despite that, they still did whatever they could to end the pregnancies, because they knew bringing this baby into the world would be worse than killing it. It would be worse for them. It would be worse for the child.

In the episode, we saw the other narrative about abortion doctors. The one where these doctors would risk their careers and freedom to make sure the abortions happened as safely as possible. They'd seen too many women die from this and wanted to do what they could to stop that.

Abortion is a very bad solution to a much bigger problem, but making it illegal won't make that problem go away. It just puts everyone back in the dark about it, makes people take bigger risks, and causes more tragedy. If we want to end it, we need to promote birth control and work to create a more stable economy. Those are the only ways to really curb it. If we make it illegal, we just end up with more women dying from Pennyroyal.