"Partial-Birth"

[James Harbeck]

>"Dilation & Curettage", no?

That's right -- D&C, dilation and curettage, is the usual manner of
performing an abortion but is also a treatment for other things such
as uterine polyps, which also have to be scraped away with a curette
(curettage is using an implement called a curette to cut and scrape
things away).

I'm not familiar with "D&E" (or wasn't until a couple of emails ago).
Is that new, the replacement of the clinical procedural "curettage"
with the more direct result-focused "extraction"? Is it seen used
more by one side of the abortion debate than the other? I read
slected articles from the NYT online every day, but I avoid pieces on
certain topics (no sense annoying or beleaguering myself
unproductively), and I just haven't heard D&E up here in the Great
White North.

James Harbeck.

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