The following letter has been edited due to length....
For a long time I have been committed to opposing, challenging and reducing the predominant behavior of my colleagues who recommend to my patients hysterectomies and ovariectomies. I worked for years without pay as an intern in gynecology until I decided that I was not interested in, but instead was frightened of, becoming part of the hospital system and accommodating myself to it.
Too many times I have seen women who are now between 50 and 60 and who have been without uterus and often without ovaries as well for 15-20 years. Too often I see recommendations for ovariectomy for women between 40 and 50 years of age without there being a real need to undergo such a radical operation.
The reasons for the operation are so impersonal, so "manly" and "unhealthy" so as to to always be scandalous. Consequently, I experience, as personal abuse, the abuse they want to inflict on women by condenming them to a treatment of physical and psycholologcial amputation. Every time a woman is told her uterus will be removed, she is not only told to have an organ removed, but a piece of her life, a symbol of her womanhood. To forget this or to ignore it is a crime and ethically unacceptable and, as such, must be condemned.
Too many women still live what they become (and the way they are) after the operation as their fate; too many women have lived with the deression and anxiety of its aftermath: old, grey, depressed, sterile, asexual and disturbed. Too many women are forced to live with the risk of heart attack, stroke, Alzheimer's and Osteioporosis hanging over their head.
Free choice of the individual woman must be respected. To forget about this or to ignore it is a crime, is ethically wrong and is disgraceful. As a woman, I revolt against this abuse. As a physician, I am ashamed.
