For most of recorded history, the burden of family planning has been placed on women, and due to restrictive laws founded on religious or demographic agendas, methods were ineffectual, harmful or even deadly. Prohibition, which persists in many countries around the world, drove women to futile rituals and back-alley abortionists. Only over the last 60 years, roughly, have there been safe and effective alternatives, and though the lives and survival rates of women have greatly improved, some continue the fight to limit their accessibility.

Many of the objects pictured here are not what they appear to be—to evade prosecution, the most important requirement for the abortionist was to avoid raising suspicions. Their tools, as a result, are repurposed, makeshift, largely medically and hygienically inadequate. Shockingly, some of these objects have modern equivalents, or are even available in stores and in use today.

An image of the procedure itself may be powerful, but the revulsion it would raise would likely lead the viewer to turn away and leave little impression. The documentary still-life, a growing trend in contemporary photography, absent of the human element, otherwise offers the viewer a point of entry and empathy to consider these objects as we might use them ourselves.