These are prior comments from earlier this year 2011 that were ignored 1 Wikipedia Elective surgery states Elective surgery is surgery that is scheduled in advance because it does not involve a medical emergency Semi elective surgery is a surgery that must be done to preserve the patient s life but does not need to be performed immediately 2 Medicinenet com defines the term Elective surgery as follows Surgery that is subject to choice election As opposed to urgent or emergency surgery 3 Medicinenet com defines the term Elective as follows In medicine something chosen elected An elective procedure is one that is chosen elected by the patient or physician that is advantageous to the patient but is not urgent Elective surgery is decided by the patient or their doctor The procedure is seen as beneficial but not absolutely essential at that time 4 Wikipedia Surgery states Types of surgery Surgical procedures are the commonly categorized by urgency type of procedure body system involved degree of invasiveness and special instrumentation Based on timing Elective surgery is done to correct a non life threatening condition and is carried out at the patient s request subject to the surgeon s and the surgical facility s availability Emergency surgery is surgery which must be done promptly to save life limb or functional capacity A semi elective surgery is one that must be done to avoid permanent disability or death but can be postponed for a short time Based on purpose Exploratory surgery is performed to aid or confirm a diagnosis Therapeutic surgery treats a previously diagnosed condition Thus a reasonable person would conclude that non emergency therapeutic surgery is a subcategory of elective surgery Nearly all surgical abortions are NOT emergency procedures in other words they are scheduled procedures and are not medical emergencies It seems that this Abortion article s inartful use of the terms elective and therapeutic confuses the reader rather than clarifying important distinctions One would use elective to describe a procedure based on the timing of the surgery One would use the term therapeutic to describe a procedure based on whether there has been a diagnosis The 2 terms are not mutually exclusive If the terms elective and therapeutic are to be applied consistently with no politically correct definitions for procedures performed on pregnant women then virtually all therapeutic abortions are also elective procedures Practically speaking in nearly all modern situataions the 2 terms will be mutually inclusive because modern medicine considers the satisfaction of any woman s desire to no longer be pregnant regardless of the reason why she no longer wants to be pregnant as therapeutic and abortion is virtually NEVER performed under emergency conditions in other words there are virtually no occurences in which an abortion must be done immediately to avoid a serious health risk The current section of this article called Induced contains a false dichotomy when it states Reasons for procuring induced abortions are typically characterized as either therapeutic or elective An abortion is medically referred to as a therapeutic abortion when it is performed to An abortion is referred to as elective when it is performed at the request of the woman for reasons other than maternal health or fetal disease This false dichotomy should be corrected by helping the reader understand that the 2 terms therapeutic and elective are virtually synonymous rather than leading the reader to incorrectly think that an abortion is EITHER elective OR therapeutic Rarely will any therapeutic abortion not also be elective Finally using the term therapeutic also implies that the condition of being pregnant is a disease or a health defect when in reality absent any political use of medical terminology pregnancy is a sign of a healthy reproductive system and is never a disease There are extremely rare occassions when organs of or near the reproductive tract are diseased and an abortion could thus be therepeutic to the gravid woman though fatal to the fetus Perhaps this wording would address these concerns An induced abortion is almost always both elective and therapeutic meaning that it is a non em