Sorry, meant contraceptives, duh. Also, I’m aware that they did have mildly scientifically backed methods for preventing pregnancy, but pregnancies are a genuine concern for modern sex workers, right? Did just way more sex workers get pregnant way more often back then, or were there genuinely methods to make pregnancy avoidable enough to not have a kid once a year if you’re having sex that much?
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Ancient Egyptians used crocodile dung 🙂 caused a barrier and I believe worked as a sort of spermicide
Contraceptives have been around for thousands of years, however, they’re not as nice as modern ones.
Animal intestines and skin can be a condom. Douching can clean out sperm. Any foreign objects in the uterus can act as an IUD, although not as effective as modern ones. Herbal remedies can induce spontaneous abortions. They also have physical means to abort a fetus.
One thing we can be sure of, nothing is new in this world. That is because people do not change. Humans get into the same good or bad things they always have done. Issues are when our societies or culture of the time collapse due to war or famine. We loose much information & knowledge. So when societies rebuild it can be lost forever or take many years to regain the previous knowledge.
Abortion Drugs Fundamental to Ancient Economies, Argues Historian:
>As [John M.] Riddle details, the Egyptians listed abortifacients in medical texts. The Greeks were so accustomed to abortion drugs that the playwright Aristophanes joked about them, describing in Lysistrata a desirable young woman “trimmed and spruced with pennyroyal,” a well-known abortion drug. Riddle holds that the plant silphium (related to giant fennel / Ferula family) was popular with the Greeks and Romans primarily because it was used to terminate pregnancies – so much so that the city-state of Cyrene (in modern-day Libya) based its whole economy on the plant until it was overharvested to extinction.
>His research reveals that in the Middle Ages, abortion drugs were also integral to economies. The typical European village would have available a “wise woman” or midwife, and later, an apothecary, who knew exactly what herbal remedies to give women who did not wish to be pregnant and could produce reliable results. Through such fertility intervention, he says, family size was managed in ways that may well have impacted whole populations, causing some government officials associating large families with economic prosperity to view women who controlled fertility as potential enemies of the state.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/abortion-drugs-fundamental-to-ancient-economies-argues-historian
There is no “abortion potion” recipe in the Bible. However, there is a passage in the Book of Numbers that is sometimes referenced in discussions about this topic. This passage describes a ritual involving a woman suspected of adultery, found in Numbers 5:11-31. It involves a priest preparing a mixture of holy water and dust from the tabernacle floor, which the woman is required to drink. This mixture is often referred to as the “bitter water.”
The context of this ritual is not related to inducing an abortion but is intended as a divine test of her fidelity. If the woman has been unfaithful, the water that brings a curse is supposed to cause her abdomen to swell and her thigh to waste away, which some interpret as a divine punishment. This text does not explicitly mention pregnancy or abortion, and interpretations vary widely among scholars, with some viewing it as a trial by ordeal to prove innocence or guilt in an accusation of adultery.
The passage does not provide a recipe or endorse the use of any substance to induce an abortion. It was to be used when a man thought his wife unfaithful. Nothing at all to do with pregnancy.
They had folk remedies, but in reality it depends. Some cultures might have used the pull out method or otherwise forbid full on intercourse.
Others just threw out pregnant prostitutes to live in squalor, or kept them around working in whatever capacity until they came to term.
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