New York college ‘reproductive justice garden’ features plants promoted as ‘abortifacients’
Pro-life leader says garden could lead to serious health risks or abuse if students use plants
Purchase College, a public university in southeastern New York, is home to a student-run “Reproductive Justice Garden” that features plants promoted because of their abortifacient properties.
Social media posts by the student club appear to encourage people to use the plants in the garden for self-induced abortions — which one pro-life leader told The College Fix she fears could lead to serious health risks or abuse.
The garden, which was launched in 2019 and revamped in 2024, is run by students who are part of the college’s “C.O.P.E.” club, or Collective Organizing for Pleasure and Equity. The group describes itself as a safe space for “females and those assigned female at birth,” and posts on its Instagram account indicate it was active during the spring semester.
A September 2024 post from the garden’s Instagram account highlights the “peacock flower” (Caesalpinia pulcherrima), stating that enslaved black women “would use the peacock flower as an abortifacient” and that “by drinking the seeds, leaves, or flowers of the plant in tea-form, enslaved women could induce a miscarriage.”
The post frames the practice as an act of resistance by enslaved women against forced reproduction under slavery. It does not mention if the peacock flower currently is grown in the garden.
Another post from Sept. 14, 2025 offers instructions on how students can harvest and “collect [plants] from the garden.”
Additionally, a garden layout from an October 2024 Instagram post labels a large section just for “abortifacient” plants. Other sections of the garden are labeled as for “pregnancy/gestation,” “mental health,” and “menstruation.”
The C.O.P.E. club did not respond to The Fix’s request for comment sent via the contact portal on its website.
Meanwhile, pro-life advocates warned that the abortion project raises serious safety concerns.
Melanie Israel, a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The College Fix that herbal abortifacients can carry significant risks because their effects and dosages are difficult to control.
“Herbal abortifacients in the hands of unsupportive partners and abusers could be, potentially, even more dangerous than the more predictable (but still risky) FDA-approved drugs,” Israel said.
“The wrong dosage of an herbal method can be toxic,” she said. “There could be a scenario where it’s not just a matter of a forced/coerced/sneaky abortion. It could be a forced abortion that also poisons a woman, using a plant with a really unpredictable margin for error.”
Israel said universities should examine whether projects involving potentially abortifacient substances receive the same oversight as other activities involving hazardous materials.
“Any student or faculty-run project involving a substance capable of causing an abortion, miscarriage, hemorrhage, organ toxicity … that should be subject to the same kind of oversight a chemistry lab or research project involving hazardous materials would be reviewed,” she told The Fix.
The university’s involvement in the garden is unclear. Purchase College media relations did not respond to three requests for comment in recent weeks regarding the nature of the project and source of its funding.
While the garden appears to be organized through a student club, college interns have helped with it, according to an October 2024 post on the club’s Instagram page. Another post says the garden has also received donations from the Purchase Student Government Association, which is funded by mandatory student fees.
Israel said that distinction is significant.
“If it crosses into the territory of providing/distributing plant materials for the intent to cause an abortion, that gets into all kinds of questions about unlicensed practice of medicine and other regulatory questions,” she said. “I’m not asserting that it’s happening, but asking what kind of safeguards are in place raises very serious concerns.”
New York has some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country, but Israel said legal permissibility does not eliminate concerns about university responsibility and liability.
“The university’s legal office should look very carefully about their liability in the event someone experiences a forced/coerced abortion from a university-sanctioned project,” she told The Fix.
Israel said her broader concern is that “with these abortion activists, it appears that the ends justify the means and ‘access’ is more important than the women who end up as collateral damage, forced into abortions they didn’t want.”
The executive director of Feminists Choosing Life of New York also raised concerns about the project, saying it sends the wrong message to women facing unplanned pregnancies.
“The abortion narrative tells pregnant women they must kill their offspring in order to be equal,” Michele Sterlace-Accorsi told The Fix in a recent interview. “It elevates the wombless male anatomy as the standard of equality.”
Rather than supporting projects centered on abortion, colleges should devote their resources to helping pregnant and parenting students succeed, she said.
“From a whole-life feminist perspective, universities and colleges should prioritize creating, maintaining, and expanding comprehensive support systems for pregnant and parenting students — life-affirming solutions that directly address their needs, especially those of low-income women,” Sterlace-Accorsi said.
She also challenged the philosophical premise underlying the garden’s mission.
“Pro-choice feminist arguments that claim ‘abortion is central to women’s liberation’ are anti-feminist, anti-women, and anti-human rights,” she said.
The garden’s promotional materials link to a website, “How to Perform an Abortion,” which describes itself as “a collaborative, research-focused art project.” Its founder, Maureen Connor, is an artist and professor emeritus of Queens College in New York.
Connor’s project aims to demystify and destigmatize “reproductive care,” through projects such as gardens, abortion monuments, workshops, and presentations in public spaces. Other locations for abortion gardens listed on the project website include Barnard College in New York City.
According to the website, the purpose of these gardens is “both as symbol and through function … women need knowledge about existing methods and the means to access them.”
The garden “explores the history of reproductive justice through plants” and “includes herbs that have been used over thousands of years for fertility, contraception and abortion,” according to the website.
The gardens are “comprised of ten plants with abortifacient potential,” the site states.
The website also includes educational materials about historic abortion methods, and states on one page that “no power structure can ultimately stop women from preventing or ending an unwanted pregnancy.”
New York college ‘reproductive justice garden’ features plants promoted as ‘abortifacients’ | The College Fix
Purchase College has a a student-run “Reproductive Justice Garden” that highlights plants historically used to induce abortions and appears to promote harvesting them for self-managed abortion.
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