Traditional abortion plants persist among Mexican migrant communities today
Andrade GM.
Ethnobotany
The scraggly rue plant many gardeners grow for its blue-green foliage and pest-repelling smell carries a centuries-deep history as reproductive medicine that colonial botanists tried to erase from the record.
For generations, Indigenous and Mexican communities have used specific plants to end unwanted pregnancies, passing that knowledge down quietly through families and healers rather than textbooks. This article looks at three plants in particular, rue, zoapatle, and Mexican prickly poppy, and traces how their use has traveled with migrants into the U.S. Southwest, adapting to new legal risks and new ways of talking about a subject that's often kept private.
Key Findings
Three plants central to the analysis are Ruta graveolens (rue), Montanoa tomentosa (zoapatle), and Argemone mexicana (Mexican prickly poppy), all historically used as abortifacients in Mesoamerican traditions.
Colonial-era botanical documentation systematically erased or suppressed Indigenous and Black reproductive plant knowledge as part of broader control over laboring bodies.
Plant-based abortion knowledge continues among migrant communities in the U.S. Southwest, adapted to local plant availability, legal risk, and cultural norms around privacy and naming.
chevron_right Technical Summary
This article traces how plants like rue, zoapatle, and Mexican prickly poppy have been used across generations by Indigenous and Mexican communities to end pregnancies, and how that knowledge persists among migrants in the U.S. Southwest despite colonial suppression and legal restrictions.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Abortifacients in Mesoamerica and the Southwest United States: Botanical and sociocultural perspectives.
Throughout colonial history, botanical exploration expanded Western scientific knowledge while reinforcing systems of control, particularly through the erasure of plant knowledge regarding human re...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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Ruta graveolens, commonly known as rue, common rue, ruda, arruda or herb-of-grace, is a species of the genus Ruta grown as an ornamental plant and herb. It is native to the Mediterranean. It is grown throughout the world in gardens, especially for its bluish leaves, and sometimes for its toleranc...