I’ve written before on the highly effective use of fertility herbs in women. I myself used herbs to encourage fertility with my first pregnancy as my husband and I did not attempt to start a family until I was well into my 30’s.
Once we discovered the wonders of Traditional Diet, however, I no longer needed any herbal assistance with later pregnancies. Herbs are also highly effective at dampening fertility in order to naturally and safely prevent pregnancy. When would such use of natural birth control be beneficial?
For one, herbal birth control would be helpful to use between pregnancies in order to space children 3-4 years apart. This allows Mom to adequately replenish her nutritional stores so that later children are just as healthy, smart and capable as the first. Spacing children a minimum of 3 years apart (birthday to birthday) was rigorously practiced in ancestral cultures. It preserves Mom’s health and prevents exhaustion and nutritional deficiency for her too.
Natural methods of birth control are always preferable to chemically based agents such as spermicides, contraceptive patches, and IUDs which emit synthetic hormones, or the contraceptive pill which decimates the balance of gut flora and can lead to autoimmune disease in the mother and any children born later.
Even IUDs that emit only copper instead of hormones to prevent pregnancy should be avoided as copper toxicity is a very real and dangerous side effect of using these devices.  According to Theresa Vernon, LAc author of the article Metals and the Mind:
If adrenal function becomes impaired, the copper builds up in the liver, brain, joints, and lungs. When this happens, you see very specific problems, including mental problems, liver problems, and detoxification problems. Phase II liver impairment is often made worse by copper toxicity, if not actually caused by it.
You also see a lot of copper toxicity with asthma and breathing problems, including emphysema. Copper also tends to build up in the joints, leading to arthritis. Chronic skin problems are also an indication of copper toxicity.
Low adrenal function is an epidemic in our modern society. Â If you doubt this, just walk into any convenience store and notice the enormous display of energy shots and drinks that are available for sale. Not to mention that a Starbucks or other coffee shop is virtually on every corner of most major cities. Americans have serious adrenal health problems. As a result, many are addicted to caffeine and sugar as a way to make it through the day. This makes any excess copper in the system a huge health problem!
Artificial contraception may be tempting in the short term. However, it is clearly not a great idea if preserving your long term hormone and gut health is important to you.
Herbs for Natural Birth Control
The use of anti-fertility herbs along with a simple barrier method such as the female or male condom that is not treated with chemicals (such as natural lambskin) works very effectively for preventing pregnancy. Â This option is especially attractive for health-conscious women who are not particularly turned on by the thought of charting their cycles, taking their basal metabolic temperature every morning, checking the stretchiness of their vaginal secretions and practicing selective abstinence a la Natural Family Planning which for some ladies over analyzes and saps the spontaneity out of what should be a very natural, uncomplicated and enjoyable event.
So if herbal birth control appeals to you, here are the different types and how they work as outlined in the very helpful book Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year. Â Please note that if sourcing your own herbs is new to you, a well-respected herbalist or acupuncturist in your area can put together a bag of herbs to assist you with natural birth control for an extremely reasonable cost. Â These professionally sourced herbs mixed in the proper proportions can then be used to prepare a cold or a hot herbal infusion that you drink periodically to keep fertility in check and under your control.
Sterility Promoting Herbs
Stoneseed Root. Â Women of the Dakota Indian tribes used this extremely powerful herb as a root infusion steeped in cold water for several hours. Â They then drank a cup every day for 6 months. The Dakota women also practiced breathing in the smoke of the plant as it burned to induce permanent sterility.
The Shoshone tribes concentrated in Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Montana also used this root for permanent sterility purposes.
Jack in the Pulpit Root. Â This root is less powerful than stoneseed root and is prepared by mixing one tsp of the dried powdered root in a half cup of cold water. Â The liquid is then strained and was consumed by women of the Hopi Tribe. Â Â Conception was prevented for one week by doing this.
Thistles. Â The Quinault Indians used thistles to induce temporary sterility by placing the entire plant in boiling water. Â The very bitter, strong tasting liquid was then consumed.
Herbs that Prevent Pregnancy
Wild Carrot Seed (Queen Anne’s Lace). Â This oily and strong tasting but not unpleasant herb is particularly useful if an “oops” occurs and unprotected relations take place during the fertile time. One teaspoon of carrot seeds is taken immediately and continued each day for another 7 days.
The women of Rajasthan, India use carrot seed for this exact purpose. While wild carrot seed is not commercially available, cultivated carrot seeds can be substituted but be sure to check that they haven’t been treated with chemicals or other toxic substances.
Research in mice has proven the effectiveness of carrot seed to prevent implantation.
Smartweed Leaves. Â A common weed that grows all over the world, smartweed contains rutin, quercetin, and gallic acid. All of these substances interfere with the initiation of pregnancy.
An infusion of one ounce of dried leaves (or 4 ounces of fresh leaves) in a quart of boiling water is consumed liberally until menstruation begins.
Like carrot seed, smartweed may also be used after relations occur on fertile days or to bring on menstruation if the period is late.
Rutin.  This phenolic compound can be purchased in tablet form. A minimum of 500 mg should be taken daily for several days before and following ovulation. Another option is to consume rutin after sexual relations and continue each day until menstruation begins.
Herbs Which Initiate Menstruation
Ginger root. Â Ginger is perhaps the fastest acting menstruation initiating herb you can use. Put 1 tsp of powdered organic ginger root into a cup and pour boiling water over it. Drink when the water cools to a temperature which is still hot but comfortable. Drink up to 4 cups per day for no more than 5 days.
Vitamin C. While plain ascorbic acid is not the natural form of Vitamin C, it can be used therapeutically on occasion to bring on menstruation if necessary. Take 500 mg every hour for 12 hours each day for up to 6 days maximum. The use of ascorbic acid in this high dosage may also produce loose bowels as a side effect.
Claire Latham via Facebook
that dose of vit C will give you kidney stones, a fate much worse than pregnancy! 😉
Sara James via Facebook
Meant pregnant very quickly
Sara James via Facebook
Yea, that got me reaaaal far. My husband returned from overseas and I was pregnant even though I was “successfully” charting my cycle, ha!
Brianne
Thank you so much for this information. In the past year I’ve been looking into herbal birth control but found the information to be very overwhelming. I appreciate the work that you put into researching this. It’s a great jumping off point for me to dig deeper!
Aimee
Thank you Sarah for posting this information!! I recently had a late term miscarriage and did not receive a rhogham shot afterwards. We feel like we are done having children, yet we’re worried about a ‘oops’ pregnancy and the complications that would bring to both myself and the baby. We tried charting- that lasted a few months. Now we’re just using condoms and paying attention to when I’m fertile (It’s fairly easy for me to tell). I can’t wait to share this information with my husband! Thanks!
IC
I’m sure you know this – but in case a comments reader doesn’t know – you can have an antibody test after a miscarriage to determine whether the baby and mother had an Rh incompatibility. This can also be monitored in pregnancy, too. You wouldn’t need rhogam if the baby was of the same Rh, even if you had prior pregnancies with a baby of an incompatible Rh factor.
Jane
Yeah, let’s all keep being excited with our unplanned pregnancies until the earth has more people than grass. And since we’re nitpicking semantics and word choices, I urge you to please stop saying preceive. It’s perceive.
I’d never even heard of using herbs to prevent pregnancy/implantation until I saw this post, nor had I heard of this idea that preventing implantation is akin to abortion. If you feel this way, whatever, but don’t get snarky with the author for trying to educate people. Like Sarah said, this is a blog about health, not religion.
Just because you don’t like something, or it doesn’t align with your views, doesn’t make other people’s views ignorant. (This goes for both sides of the debate) The argument over when human life begins is surely not going to be settled in the comments section of this blog.
Bethany
Human life will always carry morality as it’s partner. It’s just a fact of civilization. It doesn’t matter if you practice religion or not. And Jane, you obviously have been hoodwinked into the notion that we are overpopulating the earth. In fact, especially in America, this is the opposite. The birth rate in the U.S. is now below Europe’s for the first time ever, we don’t have the population to cover the entitlement programs we have in place right now to support the elderly when we are older and even my high schoolers know that all the people in the world would fit into the state of Texas! (And that’s public school that’s teaching it.) So please get your facts straight before giving silly answers like that. Sarah is used to people questioning her otherwise she wouldn’t have been a blog writer in the first place.
Shaniqua
Bethany, Spain has a negative population growth rate if you don’t include the immigrants – mostly African. I lived there for 2 years. Spaniards complained about it all the time.
Bethany
Shaniqua, I didn’t know that. I was quoting this “We generally look to Europe to see low fertility rates and shrinking populations. However, according to the Economist magazine, the U.S., at 1.9, now has a fertility rate lower than France, whose fertility rate stands at 2.0. ” from this article: by Star Parker. It is off point of this blog discussion but it does make you wonder why women seem to impress on others to only have one to two children… is this still the influence of the women’s lib movement of the 70’s? My mom is still anti-large families because of that and I find it to be an eery belief that we beat down women who want to have more children and don’t see that as a threat to our womanhood. I personally am very jealous of women who have large families. I wish I’d chosen that.
Hannah
Just because it’s an herb and a “natural substance” doesn’t mean it isn’t messing with your body and a healthy thing to do. Normal reproductive function is a state of health, and my guess is that to inhibit that, even using natural things, you are doing your body a disservice. I am not saying there is NO PLACE for these herbs, but to use them regularly and act as if there is not effect on your health is probably not a good idea. Just my two cents. I am a big Fertility awarness/natural family planning advocate, though, just so you know my bias 🙂
Sarah
I totally agree Hannah! God made our bodies to be fertile. Even though it is “natural” that doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful. This is going against Mother Nature. I know some of Sarah’s readers are religious and some aren’t, but I thought I would share a couple quotes from the early Church fathers regarding abortion:
Minucius Felix
“There are some [pagan] women who, by drinking medical preparations, extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels and thus commit a parricide before they bring forth. And these things assuredly come down from the teaching of your [false] gods. . . . To us [Christians] it is not lawful either to see or hear of homicide” (Octavius 30 [A.D. 226]).
Hippolytus
“Women who were reputed to be believers began to take drugs to render themselves sterile, and to bind themselves tightly so as to expel what was being conceived, since they would not, on account of relatives and excess wealth, want to have a child by a slave or by any insignificant person. See, then, into what great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by teaching adultery and murder at the same time!” (Refutation of All Heresies [A.D. 228]).
Here is the source for both qutoes:
Sarah
One more quote:
Basil the Great
“Let her that procures abortion undergo ten years’ penance, whether the embryo were perfectly formed, or not” (First Canonical Letter, canon 2 [A.D. 374]).
“He that kills another with a sword, or hurls an axe at his own wife and kills her, is guilty of willful murder; not he who throws a stone at a dog, and unintentionally kills a man, or who corrects one with a rod, or scourge, in order to reform him, or who kills a man in his own defense, when he only designed to hurt him. But the man, or woman, is a murderer that gives a philtrum, if the man that takes it dies upon it; so are they who take medicines to procure abortion; and so are they who kill on the highway, and rapparees” (ibid., canon 8).
Jade
Sarah, those quotes came at times when a pregnant woman – and her eventual child, if they were lucky enough to both survive – were the property of the father, meant to carry on the family name and, sometimes, it was HIS right to sell them both into slavery. Ol’ Basil wasn’t against abortion because it was “unnatural” or “immoral,” it was because it was tantamount to a lowly woman stealing a man’s PROPERTY.
Also, he was against any kind of possession against the bare minimum. I’m guessing that since you have the time to post asinine and out-of-context comments on the internet, you are NOT living on the bare minimum and giving the rest to the poor. You, according to the people you quote, should be put to death, along with the women who aborted.
Bethany
Jade, you said you were Jewish, not Catholic. This belief came from the Ten Commandments which I’m sure you are quite familiar with: “Thou Shall Not Kill”. Pretty simple. Times can change, civilizations vary, but that simple commandment has stood for well over two thousand years and continues to inform civilizations today. Sarah just may be living at the bare minimum and giving to the poor. I know a lot of Catholics who do live that way.
Jade
I am Jewish, well remembered. What belief is it, exactly, that I am professing here? Those quotes were in desperate need of context.
Alexandria
Sarah has the right to free speech of course, but that doesn’t mean that what you say doesn’t have consequences . . . positive and negative. I feel that their are a lot of negative consequences that are going to result from posting about herbs that are known abortificants. Women who precieve themselves to be in a desperate situation when faced with an unplanned pregnancy do things they regret later. . . that type of remorse doesn’t go away overnight.
Janel
And sometimes one night stands are things a woman regrets, too. Goes both ways.
Lacie
Pretty sure the remorse over killing your unborn baby and the remorse over a one night stand are significantly different. Pretttyy sure. Of course I do have my logic pants on, not my selfish pants. I had to put those away when I “accidentally” got pregnant.
Amy
Great post, Sarah!