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 reproduction issues. Abortifacients, long used by Black and Indigenous communities for fertility regulation and abortion, was among the areas for which traditional knowledge was most frequently silenced. These plants enabled reproductive autonomy and disrupted the colonial agenda of controlling laboring bodies. This synthesis draws heavily from Mexican ethnobotanical practices, and pays equal attention to how these traditions continue, transform, and persist in the U.S. Southwest, particularly among migrants navigating landscapes of legality, stigma, and botanical availability. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, community knowledge, and botanical analysis, I examine how abortifacients are used across diasporic and ancestral contexts. The use of plants such as Ruta graveolens, Montanoa tomentosa, and Argemone mexicana reflects continuity and adaptation, blending physical and culturally aligned care. I also address tensions between folk classification and Linnaean taxonomy, the role of privacy in how abortion is named or obscured, and how plant-based care persists where clinical systems fall short. Ultimately, I provide a transborder perspective on reproductive plant knowledge within the context of historical suppression and the contemporary role of cultural plant-based abortion care.