Safer Childbirth? a Critical History of Maternity Care

All industrialized countries, in the last 50 years, have seen both an improvement in the safety of childbirth and the completion of a revolution in maternity care. This book aims to show that rather than being an advance in human welfare through the application of scientific knowledge to improve the natural process of birth, evidence shows that obstetric intervention only rarely improves the natural process. The evidence is found in the statistical analyses of the actual results of care, which consistently show that birth is safer the less its process is interfered with. The findings of statistics are in accord with the expectations of biology and are supported by the observations of critical obstetricians. This work should be of interest to all doctors whose views make up "medical opinion", those who have to meet the cost of what is provided, those who study how policies in practice are developed and those who have to treat the adverse medical, social and psychological side-effects, early and late, of modern maternity care. The majority of material used relates to English experience, but some of it is drawn from other countries. The language used tries to be intelligible to the lay person and sub-headings and cross-references are used, since the same facts are often relevant in different contexts.