Heather Ault will be presenting the 4000 Years for Choice project at the 125th May Day Champaign-Urbana Midwest Zine Fest at 6pm on Saturday, April 30th, 2011.

http://midwestzinefest.ucimc.org/

4000 Years for Choice was invited to donate posters to Planned Parenthood of Illinois’s Generations Gala event on Thursday, May 5, 2011. These posters will be included in the auction. As well, additional posters will be gifted to several supporters as a thank you for their committment to protecting women’s reproductive healthcare in Illinois.

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/illinois/generations-celebration-healthy-families-36501.htm

To support their wonderful and important spiritual work, a series of posters have been donated to Faith Aloud’s fundraising event on June 11, 2011!

http://www.faithaloud.com/

“Abortion and reproductive freedom are often touchy subjects, but artist Heather Ault does not shy away from it. Ault spoke in the Bovee University Center Auditorium Tuesday night as part of the art department’s Barstow Lecture Series.” View article

Through the 2011 Stephen L. Barstow Art and Design Lectures Series, Heather Ault presented her work to an audience of students, faculty, and community members at Central Michigan University. This year’s theme was contemporary protest art. Her lecture took place in the Bovee Auditorium on March 22, 2011.

http://www.cmich.edu/x32617.xml

“Artist and activist Heather Ault, an Illinois resident, developed a series of visual narratives about the international history of abortion and contraception, known as “4000 Years for Choice.” View article

As one of the keynote speakers, Heather Ault presented her research and artwork at the Abortion Care Network’s national conference in Florida in February 2011. Her analysis covered the history, images, language, and spaces of the pro-choice movement. Her presentation was described as “the sleeper hit of the conference, and the one everyone was still talking about weeks later” by one attendee.

http://www.abortioncarenetwork.org/

Treasure Dittany!

Pliney the Elder, a Roman philosopher from the 1st century, wrote about the abortifacient effects of dittany, an herb from the mint family: it was “so powerful that it shall not be in a room with a pregnant woman.” One recipe from a Hippocratic document listed a drink of dittany, leak juice, and a large shell of oil of bitter almonds.

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Make Steaming Onions!

An 8th century Sanskrit text instructs women wishing to induce an abortion to sit over a pot of steam or stewed onions, just as Jewish women of the Manhattan Lower East Side continued to do during the early 1900s.

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Own Menopause!

For many couples without access to contraception, menopause was something to cheer for. In 1871, a man editorialized his thoughts about his wife’s transition into menopause through a cartoon reading, “There will be no more! Hoorah!”

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Develop the IUD!

Dr. Ernst Grafenberg of Germany began developing the IUD in 1909, but an early form of the method dates back to ancient times in the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East, where traders prevented their camels from becoming pregnant during long trips by inserting pebbles into the camel’s uterus.

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Choose Condoms!

In 18th century London, Mrs. Phillips and Mrs. Perkins manufactured condoms for worldwide distribution and liberated women from “big Belly and the squawling Brat”, as described in a poem. These sheaths made from animal membrane were best used when wetted first and tied securely into place with the pink silk ribbon.

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Recover Birthwort!

Herbal texts in the Middle Ages listed numerous herbs for contraception and abortion, including birthwort. As described in a 1539 edition from Germany, birthwort “disconnects a dead fetus and drives out the menses.” In a recipe for a pessary, birthwort was combined with the oil of myrth and pepper to expel a fetus.

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Affirm Egyptian Contraception!

In 3000 BCE, ancient Egyptians contained a contraceptive recipe numbered Prescription Number 21. It was called “Recipe Not To Become Pregnant” and called for crocodile feces, mixed with fermented dough, and placed in the vagina.

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Bless the Diaphragm!

The “womb veil”, today known as a diaphragm or a cervical cap, was a popular 19th century form of contraception. Advocated by Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger, they were sold widely through mail-order catalogues. In 1884, Dr. Edward Bliss Foote wrote in his book Medical Common Sense, “It places conception entirely under the control of the wife, to whom it naturally belongs; for it is for her to say at what time and under what circumstances, she will become the mother, and the moral, religious, and physical instructress of offspring.”

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Keep Birthwort!

Ancient Egyptians knew of birthwort’s ability to cause abortion and prevent pregnancy as a contraceptive, as did many ancient cultures. and contraceptive qualities. Ancient Greeks also knew of birthwort, as did many in the Middle Ages. Dioscorides, the Greek physician, described birthwort being placed “in a suppository with pepper and myrrh to provoke menstruation or to expel a fetus.”

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Connect the Cervical Cap!

In his memoirs, Casanova, the famous French lover in the 1700s, wrote about using halved lemons as cervical caps during his sexual escapades. The ascorbic acid in lemon juice acts as a fairly effective spermicide, and has been used by women for centuries!

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As part of the Human Rights and Social Justice program, Heather Ault presented her work at Miami University in Ohio. In addition to a public lecture at MacMillan Hall, she visited three undergraduta classes to discuss her experience as an artist, activist, and researcher of reproductive choice narratives. An exhibition of all 50 posters in the series is on display to the public at McMillan Hall from November 18th through December 14th, 2011.

http://www.miami.muohio.edu/news/article/view/14388

Maintain Coitus Reservatus!

In 1866, the Improved Vertical Syringe with Reverse Current Vaginal Tube was advertised in The Wife’s Handbook, written by Dr. H. A. Allbutt. He described how the syringe “is to be used with injection of sufficient power to destroy the life properties of the spermatic fluid without injury to the person” and suggested all men have one in their “future makes.”

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Maintain Coitus Reservatus!

Men during the Ming Dynasty between the 1300 and 1600s practiced the “stream of life,” with the semen supposedly whizzing back up the spinal cord to the brain by gripping the testicles to avoid ejaculation and impregnating their partner.

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Possess the Pill!

The hormonal birth control pill came onto the market in 1965 and was only available to married women through a doctor’s prescription. Seven years later, in 1972, a Supreme Court decision granted equal access to contraception to all women, regardless of their marital status.

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Cheer Casanova!

In his autobiography Histoire de ma vie, Casanova referred to condoms as, “the little preventative bags invented by the English to save the fair sex from anxiety” and “assurance caps.” One of his lovers said condoms were “nasty, disgusting, and scandalous.” Even Casanova admitted that he didn’t really like to shut himself up “in a piece of dead skin”, but despite having over two hundred lovers, he never fathered a child.

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Learn Plato and Aristotle!

Plato and Aristotle, the important founding figures in Western philosophy, reflected on reproductive control and desired population size. Plato wrote, “There are many devices available. If too many children are being born, there are measures to check propagation.” Aristotle described how induced abortion was a practice to “limit the size of each family… if children are then conceived in excess of the limit so fixed.”

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Pronounce King Charles!

Folklore has it that King Charles II, of England, was the first to use condoms in the 1600s. The court physician, “Dr. Condom” was said to have invented the animal-tissue sheaths to keep King Charles from fathering illegitimate children and getting diseases from prostitutes. However, it is likely that the label “condom” derives from the Latin word “condus”, meaning receptacle.

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Preserve Pennyroyal!

In an herbal guide from the Middle Ages, women were pictured grinding pennyroyal with a mortar and pestle, a popular abortifacient method dating back to Hippocratic times. In the late 1800s, “pennyroyal pills” were sold by druggists along with other herbal remedies, such as “tansy, rue, roots and seeds of the cotton plant, cedar gum, and camphor”, techniques originally brought from Africa to the United States.”

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Collaborate Margaret Sanger!

Margaret Sanger’s original defense of birth control was strongly feminist. In 1920 she wrote, “No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”

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Nourish Breastfeeding!

Since ancient times throughout the world, women have prolonged breastfeeding to prevent new pregnancies. During full-time breastfeeding for six-months after birth, most mothers do not ovulate and do not have menstrual periods.

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Secure the Pessary!

An advertisement for a pessary from the late 1800s read, “a simply devised instrument made of pure soft medicated rubber, to be worn by the female (during coition) as a protection against contraception… and with care will last for years.” Other pessaries from this time included a “Contraceptive Fudge”, made from cocoa butter, borax, salicylic acid, and quinine bisulphate.

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Assert Silphium!

Soranus, an ancient Greek physician and medical writer, wrote about the silphium plant. He suggested that women drink the juice once a month because “it not only prevents conception but also destroys anything existing.”

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Discuss Condoms!

In 16th century Italy, physician Gabriele Falloppio recommended the condom to prevent pregnancy, as well as syphilis, known as the “The French Disease.”  These linen sheaths were soaked in a chemical solution and dried before use. He conducted an experimental trial with 1,100 men and reported that none of them contracted the deadly disease.

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Think Soranus!

Soranus, the most well-known gynecologist during the Roman Empire, wrote, “A contraceptive differs from an abortive, for the first does not let conception take place while the latter destroys what has been conceived. Let us therefore call the one abortive and the other contraceptive.”

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Believe Crocodile Dung!

The Petri Papyrus, an ancient Egyptian medical text from 1850 BCE, listed several methods for contraception, including one made from one pint of honey and sodium carbonate, and another made of a paste of crocodile dung! Amazingly, both methods are likely to have worked due to their anti-spermicidal properties.

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Sing Squirting Cucumber!

A Hippocratic treatise on women’s problems claimed that the squirting cucumber, or “wild cucumber”, was good as “an abortive pessary for the uterus” and furthermore, “there is nothing better.” Others who wrote of the plant’s abortive properties were ancient Roman physicians Dioscorides and Galen, and an author from the 5th century called Apuleius, who wrote that it was used “for an abortion.”

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Greet the Yam!

The yam, a plant with contraceptive effects, is a major food staple on the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea. In their traditional worldview, women believed that in order to become pregnant, they needed to be infused by the spirits from the nearby island of Tuna, where yams were not as prevalent.

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Share Surgical Abortion!

During the 3rd century, a prolific Christian writer known as Tertullian described two surgical abortion methods used at the time; a surgical instrument made from a copper spike and blade and a hook device.

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Thank Madame Trotula!

Madame Trotula, from the School of Salerno in Italy, wrote the first ever treatise to obstetrics that is known. It was a major source of information on women’s health during the 13th century. In her writings, she describes at length different ways of “regulating” menstruation.

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Respect Walrus Ribs!

Eskimo tribes used carved walrus ribs to perform surgical abortions, similar to instruments used by women in the decades before abortion was decriminalized in the United States.

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Dance Willow!

Women have known for a long time that willow bark or leaves prevent conception. A contraceptive recipe, noted by Aetius Amidenus, was given in the sixth century: boil willow bark down and drink it “continually” with honey “to temper its bitterness.” In 1085, medieval writer Constantine the African described “the juice of the willow leaves so that a woman will not conceive.”

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Retain Juniper Berries!

In 1597, Dr. John Gerard, surgeon-barber and curator of the medicinal gardens at the College of Physicians of London, wrote in his popular herbal guide that juniper bush, also known as savin, “bringeth downe the menses with force, it draweth away from the afterbirth, expelleth the dead child, and kileth the quicke.” Almost 1500 before then, Pliny the Elder stated, “Gossip records a miracle: that to rub crushed juniper berries all over the male part before coition prevents conception.”

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Grow Pomegranate Seeds!

During ancient times, pomegranate seeds were associated with a “pause in infertility”. They were known as a common antifertility agent in Greek medicine and written about by physicians Hippocrates, Soranus, Dioscorides, and Aetius, all of who prescribed the herb to prevent conception.

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Treasure the Menstrual Extractor!

In 1971, Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothmann developed an extraction device to remove menstrual lining from the uterus, and if needed, safely abort an early pregnancy. From the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Los Angeles, and on national tours, they taught thousands of women how to use this method to confidently gain control of their reproductive lives.

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Empower the Douche!

At the turn of the century, many women hung douches filled with warm water and alum next to their beds for use after sex. In the early 1900s, one physician noted, “The older ladies in the community are prolific in advice. Hot douches, hot baths, and hot drinks are recommended. Certain teas are given – and different emmenagogue pills, made from herbs that stimulate menstruation, are easily procurable.”

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Know Artemisia!

During the Middle Ages, artemisia was known as the “mother of all herbs” and was used to cure female ailments. The Bishop of Rennes in France wrote, “it stimulates menstra, and whether drunk or applied, stimulates an abortion”.

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Feel Fennel!

In the Lorsch Manuscript, written in 800 CE, fennel was said to cause abortions, and in Macer’s Herbal, a manuscript from 1070, the plant was listed as a “menstrual purgative”. Although in 1694, Dr. John Peachy, a practicing physician in London, wrote that fennel prevented or hindered abortion. Meanwhile, it was also used to better one’s eyesight in order to see witches and warlocks!

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Applaud Patricia Maginnis!

In 1959, Patricia Maginnis began handing out information on San Francisco street corners about obtaining safe and affordable illegal abortions. Through her gesture, Ms. Maginnis became the first abortion rights activist in history. In 1961, she formed the Society for Humane Abortion that called for the repeal of all laws criminalizing abortion in California. She also developed a do-it-yourself abortion method that many women on the West Coast used to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

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Harmonize Queen Anne’s Lace

From early times to present, women from ancient Rome, India, and the hills of the Appalachians have passed down the secrets of the wild carrot plant, otherwise known as Queen Anne’s Lace, through oral tradition. A North Carolina mountain woman described taking a spoonful of seeds with a glass of water every time she and her husband had intercourse and was free of pregnancy for ten years.

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Experience Fertility Awareness!

In the year 388, Augustine of Hippo wrote about a woman’s “safe period.” It wasn’t until 1930 when a Roman Catholic physician developed a “rhythm method” based on the new scientific understanding of ovulation. In the 1950s, Catholic medical researchers made further discoveries in fertility awareness, such as monitoring cervical fluid, leading even more women to reproductive freedom. The natural family planning method is endorsed by the Catholic Church and taught to married couples worldwide.

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Gather Aloe!

Theodore Priscianus, a 4th century Roman doctor, documented a mixture of aloe, opopanax root, and myrrh to induce an abortion. He described using it when a woman was too young or the opening of the womb was too small. Aloe boasted over thirty different medicinal uses in ancient times, and was used by midwives and pharmacists to “stimulate” menstruation in the 1800s.

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Unite Emma Goldman!

“I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to love whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love and freedom in motherhood.” – 1897 During the early 20th century, Emma Goldman toured throughout the country speaking about the importance of birth control in women’s lives. In 1916, she was arrested for violating the Comstock Act, a law passed in 1873 banning information about contraception and abortion in the United States.

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Cooperate Jane Collective!

In the 1960s, a group of young women in Chicago started “The Service”, an underground feminist, health-care referral system to help women find safe and affordable illegal abortions. The collective renamed itself “Jane” and trained themselves to provide surgical abortions in-house. Between 1969 and 1973, Jane performed nearly 12,000 abortion procedures.

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Embrace the Chaste Tree!

According to Dioscorides, an ancient Greek physician, pharmacologist, and botanist, the chaste tree “destroys generation as well as provokes menstruation.” The plant’s petals, fruit, and seeds were made into anti-pregnancy wines and teas.

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Rejoice Fumigation!

Women have been fumigating their vaginas with contraceptive vapors for thousands of years! Kettles were used in the 16th century, but the method dates back to an Egyptian medical text from 1850 BCE.

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4000 Years for Choice will be at the United States Social Forum in the Tent Village! Please come check out the tent space that will display the protest signs, posters, and postcards.

Heather Ault will also be participating in co-organizing an abortion rights workshop, headed up by World Can’t Wait. Here’s the info!

Workshop
Standing up for Women’s Right to Abortion in 2010
World Can’t Wait and 4000 Years for Choice
Wed, 06/23/2010 – 3:30pm – 5:00pm
TWW Building, Floor 2
151 West Fort Street, Detroit

People who care about the humanity of women must boldly challenge the anti-scientific assumptions and anti-women morality that prevails throughout the debate over women’s right to abortion with clarity: not by seeking common ground with the movement that seeks nothing less than the submission of women to men. At a time when the country is fighting multiple unjust wars and during a time of great political and economic instability, racist tea-baggers should not be the only ones in the streets right now. We will discuss how the efforts to stand up for abortion rights interacts with our work to reverse the “Bush doctrine” of aggressive, torture, and indefinite detention, and the fascist direction of U.S. society associated with the Christian fundamentalists and the neo-cons. This presentation will include showing a video clip from “Abortion, Morality, and the Liberation of Women,” which we use in high school and college classes. We argue that “abortion is not murder; fetuses are not babies, and women are not incubators” and that confining our protest to what the Democratic Party accepts will just lead us further and further away from a world where women themselves can truly and freely decide when and whether to bear children.

Finally, here’s a list of USSF workshops prepared by the Gender Justice Working Group:  A Program of Gender Justice Related Events

My MFA thesis show, upon graduation from the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois, consisted of a series of celebration signs that visualize the 4000 Years for Choice history. These signs are intended to connect people with spaces, namely, clinic spaces where there is little, if no, active grass-roots pro-choice presence. Rather than “defending” clinics whenever there is an anti-choice attack, why not think pro-actively with art, music, and festivities that speak to the joyfulness and empowerment  that is gained from knowledge, resources, creativity, and autonomy in our lives? These signs speak to this potential, as women learn about the ancient traditions of contraception and abortion and realize they embedded within history for as long as it has been recorded.

More pictures can be found on the Flickr photostream!

The history of the reproductive choice movement is impressively long. It is inspiring to know of those who have fought for reproductive freedom and women’s equality. Good to know too that the historical trend is to greater choice! We will keep up the good fight for choice, freedom, equality and privacy.” - Bruce, Canada

“I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the revolutionary work that you are doing with this project. I am a nurse at a women’s surgery center and I talk to my patients every single day about exactly what you are conceptualizing.” – Sarah, Texas

i am loving this artist’s work. incredible. visually arresting and powerful words. if you are interested in seeing more of her work, or better yet purchasing it, you can purchase posters on etsy…  View article

Abortion protesters stake out Mott Haven clinic in national 40 Days for Life campaign – A Bronx women’s health clinic finds itself the target of anti-abortion activists from around the nation… A slew of responses to the 40 Days For Life campaign have cropped up across the country. Heather Ault, an artist and graduate student at the University of Illinois, started her own 4,000 Years of Choice project in opposition to the protests… View article

“Your project is wonderful! Linda Gordon’s book, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right – a History of Birth Control and Abortion in the U.S. 1976, has long been on my book shelf. I use it in the training of counselors at the Hope Clinic for Women, where I have been the Dir. of Counseling for 33 years. Whenever I gave a talk in high schools and colleges on birth control or abortion, I’d always start out with these herstorical facts. Herstory is SO important!” – Anne, Tennessee

Cherish the Sponge!

In the 5th century, Jewish Talmudic law suggested three groups of women – young girls, pregnant women, and lactating women – avoid pregnancy by using sponges collected from the sea. Contraceptive sponges were later sold in mail order catalogs during the 1800s.

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“What a great project!! Thanks. I’m an abortion provider and it does my heart glad to see this under represented bit of history! I will share this with my colleagues at the Abortion Care Network.” – Peg, New York

As someone who sees a great many clients with a variety of issues, I am often surprised by the amount of misinformation people are saddled with. But I am just as frequently angered by the amount of dis-information they have been exposed to. Dis-information is better known by it’s franker, and shorter name: lies… View article

4000 Years for Choice is a campaign created by artist Heather Ault. It dispels the common idea that abortion and contraceptive rights began with 20th-century feminism… View article

“A very nice initiative and very much needed!” – Christian, Austria

Take a look at these photos and the history of 4000 years for Choice from Heather Ault… View article

Check out this sweet new campaign, 4000 years for choice, created by artist and activist Heather Alut. The concept of the project is to send postcards (gorgeously designed) in response to women’s health clinics being targeted by the anti-choice campaign “40 Days for life”… View article

On February 17th, anti-choicers started the “40 Days for Life” campaign, where they show up at abortion clinics and harass patients and employees even more than usual. Now there’s a great (and informative) response: 4,000 Years for Choice. The conclusion: Women have, forever, been trying to control their reproductive capacities and determine for themselves the number and spacing of their children…. View article

Have you ever wondered what women did to control their fertility in the days before The Pill? I know I have. A new website is hoping to shed some light on the history of birth control. 4000 Years for Choice visualizes the ancestral traditions passed down for millennia by lineages of mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. The rediscovery of these practices is deeply transformative when one considers “the right to choose,” especially for those who have been exposed to the “abstinence until marriage” and “anti-abortion” rhetoric… View article

Visual artist Heather Ault launched a new pro-choice arts activism to push back against a nasty campaign of anti-women harassers. The antis get their jollies at this time of the year by swarming women’s reproductive health centers and abortion clinics for 40 days — Ault calls it “the pro-life movement’s occupation”… View article

What a cool site: 4000 Years for Choice is all about art, history & the pro-choice movement to educate and transform people. Heather Ault is the artist behind this, and she has some inspiring pieces! See it here… View article

“I lecture on the history of reproductive agency in my women’s studies classes at the University of South Carolina – this is an excellent resource for my students to use to empower themselves.” – Cindi, South Carolina

Praise Madame Restelle!

In the mid-1800s, Madame Restelle was one of over 200 abortionists practicing in New York City. Abortion services were largly obtained by middle and upper class women during a time when smaller families were becoming more socially and economically desirable.

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4000 Years for Choice, a new campaign created by designer/artist/activist Heather Ault, sends beautifully designed postcards exhibiting facts about ancient forms of contraception and abortion to women’s health clinics across the country on a weekly basis. A direct response to anti-choice groups such as 40 Days for Life who spread horrific anti-abortion messages to the same clinics, 4000 Years for Choice dispels the common notion that abortion and contraceptive rights began with the twentieth century women’s liberation movement and sheds light on these practices’ ancient past. Check out 4000YearsForChoice.com to see all of the designs, which are also available printed on postcards and posters at the campaign’s Etsy Shop… View article

Ohhhhhhh, now I get it. The Harper Theocracy doesn’t care for contraception or women’s reproductive rights because these are pagan, pre-Christian concepts. (Anybody else notice how miserable everybody was back when the Church was in charge?) Which brings us to this nifty new website, 4000 Years for Choice… View article

“I absolutely love your campaign! It is so refreshing to see some positive action in the abortion debate.” – Eleanor, Georgia

The “40 Days of Life” Campaign is slated to last from February 17 – March 28. I know this is truly depressing and it hurts, but there is a counter campaign this year that might make you smile… View article

“This is absolutely fabulous! I’m going to spread the word in provider circles. What I would really like to do it to plaster the walls of the Missouri capitol with your posters!” – Becky, Missouri

Love Silphium!

In ancient times, Cyrenne, a colony in northern Africa, exported large amounts the silphium plant to Greece, Rome, India, and Egypt. It was prized as a contraceptive and abortive herb! Silphium’s heart-shaped seed was pictured on the coins of Cyrenne. It was said to be a “gift from Apollo and worth its weight in silver!” Cyrenne became rich from it’s cultivation. Within 600 years, it was over-harvested and driven to extinction.

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Honor Avicenna!

The Canon of Medicine, a medical text written by Avicenna in 1025, contained chapters entitled, “Regimen for Abortion and the Extraction of the Dead Fetus” and “The Prevention of Pregnancy.”

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“It’s amazing! Wow! Absolutely inspiring… a call to action!” – Sarah, Michigan

Discover Acacia!

In 1500 BCE, the Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical tablet, listed a contraceptive plug made from an acacia plant, honey, and lint. The leaves of the acacia plant contain a lactic acid similar to modern spermicides.

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Celebrate Roe!

Celebrate Roe v Wade! 37 years of abortion rights!

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