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The United States offers the most advanced technical obstetrical care in the world. Yet it ranks only 23rd in maternal and infant mortality and morbidity rates with 9.9 deaths per 1000 live births.-Population Reference Bureau 1990

In 1972, fifteen other countries in the world had lower infant mortality rates than the United States. In 2001 thirty-six other countries in the world had lower infant mortality rates than did the USA.

The World Health Organization reports, "Midwives are the most cost effective and appropriate primary care givers for all childbearing women in all instances and in all settings." Marsden Wagner states, "Midwives are trained to focus on the normalcy of pregnancy and birth, placing the needs and wishes of the mother first, and avoiding interventions unless absolutely necessary. Obstetricians, on the other hand, are physicians trained to focus on pathology and to intervene. When the balance does not exist, the surgical interventions in birth rise to levels that most experts worldwide believe to be far beyond what is necessary." This WHO policy has been in place for more than thirty years.

The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages the use of drugs for the laboring woman and states that no drug has been found safe for the baby in utero.

Dr. Michel Odent writes, "For the body's natural powers to come into play, they must be left alone…when drugs are not used, the body can defend itself effectively and naturally against [pain]." As the body responds to the natural oxytocin that causes the uterus to contract, more endorphins are released into the system, reducing the pain and creating a sense of well-being. -- "Runner's high" -- As the contractions of the uterus become longer and stronger, more endorphins are released.

The FDA has no definition of what "safe" is. In a letter to Doris Haire of North Central Bronx Hospital in New York City, the FDA director said that the FDA does not guarantee the safety of any drug, even those drugs that it approves as "safe." Says Haire, "There is no doubt in my mind, and in the minds of many other individuals working with brain-injured children, that a large proportion of brain-injured and learning-disabled children are the result of obstetric drugs administered to women to relieve discomfort or pain, or to induce or stimulate their labor. Most women are unaware that obstetric drugs diminish the supply of oxygen to the unborn baby's brain and can result in brain damage."

As early as 1980 the National Institutes of Health cautioned against using the Electronic Fetal Monitor for low-risk pregnancies, predicting that it would only contribute to more cesareans.

The World Health Organization recommends that no hospital have a cesarean rate over 10% each year and maintains that those who do are intervening too often in the birth process. What has happened between 1970 and 1990 to increase the average cesarean rate in the USA from 5% to 25%?

In 1975 the American Academy of Pediatrics announced that there is no absolute medical indication for routine circumcision. None of the so called "medical" reasons for circumcision has ever been validated by research.