My only complaint about birth control is that the people who should be using it usually aren’t.

Birth control falls into three different classes; practical, yah right, and downright dangerous.
Women could avoid conception by holding their breath during the man’s orgasm, or immediately jumping backwards (eyes closed facing forward – no peeking or it won’t work) seven times after coitus. They could also try a quick swab of the vagina after intercourse with unused, virgin lamb’s wool.
Packing the vagina with animal dung or using honey, pepper, alum, or lactic acid as a pessaries and/or barrier to the little swimmers.
Centuries ago the women in China would ingest a concoction of lead and mercury, which had the unfortunate consequence of insanity, sterility, or death.
Middle Eastern women would take a sharpened stick, insert it into the vagina, and tying one end to the leg for a night. Though this method did work, it had a tendency to have unfortunate side effects if the user tossed-n-turned during the night.
During the Middle Ages European women would wear the testicles of weasels on their thighs, or wear its amputated foot around their necks during the horizontal rhombi. They also would wear wreaths of herbs, black cat’s livers or bone shards, hare anuses, and even flax lint bound in menstrual blood soaked cloth. It was also believed that walking three times around the spot where a pregnant she-wolf had urinated would scare the unborn child away.
During the last century Canadian women drank dried beaver testicles stewed in a strong alcohol solution. This one sounds more like a guy invention to help loosen up the distressed girl friend for a second round.
Though some of this sounds ridiculous, as recently as the 1990s girls in Australia were using candy bar wrappers as condoms, believing the foil would prevent conception.
For centuries many women were not passing their first menarche (period) until their late teens or early twenties. So sexual antics were not producing unwanted teenage pregnancies. The age dropped to an average of 12-1/2 years-of-age during the 1840s. This change is believed to have occurred due to better nutrition, environmental factors, and genetics. (source – Sanfilippo & Hertweck)”[/quote]

Radiatidon,
Where are you dear Don? Any where else on the WWW net? Miss you and your wonderful stories. xxxooo

[quote]lizdini: It’s sad that in a country with the motto “freedom and justice for all” so many people feel they are in a position to recommend forced sterilization of people they find to be below them. Americans really don’t want to help anyone, it’s all about what they want & screw everyone else. [/quote]
From what I read, some of those suggesting sterilization are actively involved in helping people, and unless I missed some comment, only on poster ever suggested FORCED sterilization.

Even being paid for sterilization is ethically questionable. I believe the US have in their constitution about “some certain, unalienable rights” meaning there are some things that may not be given away for money. I am sure selling kidneys is covered by this and sterilization would probably be a very dark grey area…

As for deciding who should be allowed to have children and who shouldn’t – by what authority are we to decide who is able to raise a child? Get a writ from a shrink saying you are qualified to do so? On this page alone I have read stories of mothers who should have aborted their child by most standards mentioned here, yet they loved their child and did their best to raise it. On the other hand child abuse does happen even in wealthy upper class families.

Should someone be denied the right to bear children because they are poor? Poor by what standard? Even the poorest family in the US has lots and lots more than the average family in Bangladesh. So should people in Bangladesh not have children? Do children in Bangladesh automatically lead unhappy lives?

Some of the comments on this page go into a direction I do not like at all. I think there is a more recent article about this topic:
https://www.damninteresting.com/?p=962
I’ll probably have a few comments there as well once I get there on my way through the archives.

Anyway, back to the article at hand, I had heard about this plant from my college (community & a good education it was) anthropology teacher before, but still very DI!