A Spark of Light: A Novel

He told his medical students that Aristophanes mentioned pennyroyal tea as an abortifacient—just five grams of it could be toxic. That Pliny the Elder said if a woman didn’t want a pregnancy, she could step over a viper or ingest rue. Hippocrates suggested that a woman who wanted to miscarry jump and hit herself on the bottom with her heels until the embryo released and fell out; if that didn’t work, there was always a mixture of mouse dung, honey, Egyptian salt, resin, and wild colocynth that you could insert into the uterus. A Sanskrit manuscript from the eighth century recommended sitting over a pot of boiling water or steaming onions. Scribonis Largus, the court doctor for Emperor Claudius, had a recipe that included mandrake root, opium, Queen Anne’s lace, opopanax, and peppers. Tertullian, the Christian theologian, described instruments that match the ones used today for a D & E and said Hippocrates, Asclepiades, Erasistratus, Herophilus, and Soranus all employed them.

He showed a slide of a bas relief from the year 1150 decorating the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, where a woman in the underworld was getting an abortion at the hands of a demon.

It stood to reason that both life and death began with a spark of light.

If you slipped inside, you saw an easel with a white canvas, and a scatter of colored Sharpies. BEFORE I DIE, Bex had painted across the top, I WANT TO …
Over the course of two weeks, people who came to the park to eat lunch or skateboard or read a book had wandered inside out of curiosity, and had contributed their own answers.
… swim in all five oceans.
… run a marathon.
… fall in love.
… learn Mandarin.
When Bex took down the installation she had, at the very bottom of the canvas, finished her own open sentence, painting the word
Live.

if men were the ones to get pregnant, abortion would probably be a sacrament. The Super Bowl halftime show would celebrate it. Men who had terminated pregnancies would be asked to stand and be applauded at church for the courage to make that decision. Viagra would be sold with a coupon for three free abortions.

Violence, from one angle, looked like mercy from another.

Did you have to be missed to exist?

“I didn’t know about your dad. I’m sorry.”
Hugh paused in the doorway. “My dad was the greatest guy. He never touched a drop of alcohol in his life, Chief.” He inclined his head. “I was just selling hope.”

… but I think you’d get it. I’ll just say that no kid deserves to be hit all the time. And no parent should be drunk all the time.

to run the gauntlet of protesters