Letters

A dilation and curettage, also called a D&C, is a medical procedure that involves dilation of the cervix in order to scrape out any foreign or harmful tissue from the uterus.

It is a procedure that is frequently essential after a miscarriage in order to restore a woman’s uterus to health by removing any leftover alien tissue and thereby also making a healthy future pregnancy possible.

It is also a procedure that helps women suffering from uterine fibroids, which, although benign where cancer is concerned, are nonetheless causes of unusual bleeding and pain.

This surgical scraping of the womb by a doctor with a curette to restore a healthy uterus may also prevent the need for a hysterectomy.

And D&C also is a surgical abortion.

The unintended consequences of Justice Samuel Alito et al. voting out Roe v. Wade, which established women’s constitutional right over their own bodies, are women’s needless deaths, serious illnesses and women being at the mercy of institutionalized ignorance. As always, arrogance goes with ignorance, and six U.S. Supreme Court justices have displayed an insupportable amount of both.

Now, in those regressive Republican states in which prior anti-abortion laws have just kicked in, doctors, fearing felony indictments and possible life prison sentences for performing “illegal abortions,” may now hesitate to provide essential D&C health care to women’s health problems described in the paragraphs above.

There is no need to cite the appalling case of a 10-year-old girl pregnant by a rapist who had to travel to another state to have the essential D&C procedure. It should be enough that there are at least three conditions, cited above, which can and do afflict many women. These medical conditions require a medical scraping of the womb for women’s health, for their future ability to bear children, for the sake of preventing even more severe threats to their bodies if they are denied a D&C.

But can one blame doctors who fear that any D&C they perform, no matter how essential to a woman’s health, may subject them to the draconian punishments for performing abortions?

Evelyn Konrad

Attorney at law

Southampton