They do this despite the widespread availability of safe, legal and inexpensive abortions in clinics and hospitals largely because they don't trust the healthcare system, said Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, an obstetrician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center.

One study, by Gynuity Health Projects, surveyed 1,200 women, mostly Latinas, in New York, Boston and San Francisco. The other, by Planned Parenthood, involved focus groups with 32 Dominican women in New York and Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic capital.

Both studies found women from the fervently anti-abortion cultures take pills such as misoprostol, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for reducing gastric ulcers but illegally used in the Dominican community to induce abortion, The New York Times reported.

They also mix malted beverages with aspirin, salt or nutmeg; throw themselves down stairs; have people punch them in the stomach; and drink teas of avocado leaf, pine wood, oak bark and mamon chino fruit peel, the studies found.

The Times found in interviews some also drink "juice de jeans," a noxious brew made by boiling denim hems.

"The things they mention are: 'It is easier.' 'It was recommended to them by a friend or a family member,'" Dr. Daniel Grossman, an obstetrician with San Francisco's Ibis Reproductive Health, told the Times. Ibis joined Gynuity in conducting the larger study.