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Hekate

(90,643 posts)
4. Interesting. Were the books intended for Japanese doctors, or only Americans?
Fri Sep 10, 2021, 03:29 AM
Sep 2021

IIRC Japan legalized abortion after WW II, when overseas Japanese* came back in numbers and the islands were overcrowded.
(* there had been attempts to colonize conquered territories; needless to say, when the war was over countries like China and Korea wanted the Japanese to go back where they came from)

In any case, to have medical books on women’s health care simply ignore abortion seems — odd. At a minimum a doctor needs to know how to do a D&C in order to make sure a miscarriage is complete — anything left behind can cause hemorrhage or sepsis. It was a well-known procedure in my mother’s generation (1924-2006), enough so that jug-ears here overheard things.

I wonder if the missing chapter had something to do with how conflicted the so-called pro-lifers made everyone feel. I remember reading (it may have been in the ‘90s) that young medical students were avoiding classes on anything to do with abortion procedures because of the bitter public controversy, and that the lack of knowledge going forward was going to end up being a hazard.

I was a proofreader myself at one time, in the mid-70s, and one of our repeat jobs was a medical journal on Leprosy research, which I found quite interesting. I would have enjoyed the OB/GYN books even more, as those were my fertile years

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