I'm gonna woman'splain something to men here about abortion as health care. Just so you know.
Most women know this stuff but so many men don’t that I’m going to use my nursing background to tell you. I also have had personal experience with a D&C after losing a twin pregnancy at 20 weeks.
Pregnancy 101 starts here.
Apologies in advance if this is too rudimentary for you.
A D&C is a surgical procedure to remove abnormal tissues from the uterine lining. Dilation and curettage (D&C) is a surgical procedure in which the cervix is opened (dilated) and a thin instrument is inserted into the uterus. This instrument is used to remove tissue from the inside of the uterus (curettage).
Statistically, It is safer than having a tooth pulled.
When a woman miscarries several things can go bad. During the first 3 months (first trimester =12 weeks)
a woman’s hormones may dip or fluctuate so much that the pregnancy is unsustainable. Sometimes the fetus is malformed or incomplete and isn’t going to keep growing normally. Maybe a trauma happens;
at any rate the fetus isn’t going to make it. Sometimes women choose to get an abortion for whatever reasons they have. Plan B pills are designed to open and empty the uterus by stimulating a period within a few days of conception. Most of the time these drugs work well and women don’t need to see a Dr at all.
Most women in the first trimester just have a hard period and the uterus is emptied. Miscarriage is fairly common and most women have no complications. BUT sometimes there may be something left behind.
Now the uterus, by design is very vascular, after all we produce the bloody lining for an egg every month.
If something isn’t passed out it can keep bleeding or just stay behind. The body has hormones telling it hey, you’re pregnant and don’t let go. So that is considered an Incomplete abortion or miscarriage.
Point: The uterus is NOT empty and in some cases the hormones didn’t get the message.
Most people don’t know that during the first trimester a women’s blood volume is TRIPLED, so when we mean bleeding we are talking about a LOT of blood. The fetus is not yet an ounce in size at twelve weeks.
Most women have missed a period at 6 weeks. By the way abortion nationwide used to be available until 16 weeks. This was kind of the golden week when the heartbeat first starts up. At 20 weeks a fluttering is felt by the mother.
Around the transition into the second trimester things get tricky. Fetus/placenta is growing larger and with all that blood severe complications happen, and can happen quickly. When things go bad to worse, there are the most common problems.
Whatever is going on these problems mean the pregnancy is over, the fetus is dead or dying.
The point is NOTHING will sustain life.
Problems like:
The amniotic fluid is escaped, thru a tear or spontaneous rupture.
The placenta detached and no blood or nutrients can get to fetus.
The fetus just doesn’t develop as it should. Trauma can be a factor;
a fall or car wreck, the flu, or just a miscarriage happening late.
The problem at this point is if the fetus is dead and the contents are not expelled it festers.
The further along in the pregnancy the worse the complications.
Now Mom needs real HELP. Second trimester from 12- 20 weeks problems are much more serious.
She will need Mifepristone or a like drug to stimulate contractions to expel the remainder
and sometimes followed with a D&C to suction out anything left behind.
This is the SAME drug that is used in labor/delivery to stimulate labor or post partum bleeding.
Also some women will also need a D&C in a timely manner.
These drugs and procedures will save almost anybody. They are fairly simple to perform and effective.
Unless you wait.
A high fatality rate is associated with bleedouts. I am talking a LOT of blood, too. (Remember that blood volume is tripled by now).
NOW Mom needs a transfusion and possibly (in severe bleeds)
surgery to remove the uterus before they bleed to death. QUICKLY too. This is the way we used to do it.
Now with our draconian laws, the Dr thinks she will spontaneously abort on her own and he just has to wait for this. Fever, pain and advancing systemic infection is setting in.
Now, If the contents are still there, the patient may have waited weeks, sometime months the woman is going into sepsis. A systemic infection that goes into every organ . Kidneys shut down, patient can go into shock or a coma. Death is imminent. Surgery and heavy medical support is your only hope.
They will take the whole uterus is it gets this far.
NOW imagine bleeding out in a parking lot with your husband, because the Dr is worried about losing his or her license. Or losing consciousness and waking up without a uterus because YOU waited too long.
Or explaining to her family why she died.
I will add that I saw a statistic that most of the women that have abortions are married with 3 children at home.
Sorry if this went on too long, but I keep seeing erroneous posts about abortion (not here usually)
and had to clear this up.
Thanks for listening to my woman’splaining rant.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I was only aware it involved something like a D&C and that's why I asked.
Thanks for enlightening me! 
I hope your recovery is complete.
They know that if they let the doctors talk, they will hear about all the ways that their precious abortion bans will harm people, and they'd rather not know about those things. It's the legislative equivalent of this:
They also deliberately make any exceptions to their bans as vague as possible, because they see them as loopholes that doctors might "take advantage of" to provide abortion care to women who don't (in their opinion) "need" it. What if a few women are harmed or even die as a result? No biggie. Saving the "babies" from those irresponsible sluts who can't keep their legs together is all they care about! 
...and have 3 kids already.
Thanks for posting this. Very valuable and sensible.
My biggest gripe, (other than the obvious,) is the people claiming to hear a heartbeat at 6 weeks.
And I wish I could rec your post much more than once. Thank you for taking the time to lay it out in common language that even a Supreme Court Justice could understand.
Not only is access to a properly-administered D&C essential to saving a woman's life, it can also preserve a woman's fertility. Improper or nonexistent prenatal care can lead to a woman's inability to ever bear children in the future.
Is that what the Repukes want when they ban abortions? I don't think so.
