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Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many obstetricians and some midwives had begun recommending routine elective induction, meaning no medical reason for inducing labor, at 39 weeks. With the [...]

According to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, the U.S. cesarean rate in 2018 was 32%, having held steady at 1 in 3 U.S. women for over a decade.27 Among 1st-time mothers who [...]

According to provisional U.S. data for 2017, after four years of inching downward from 32.9% in 2013 to 31.9% in 2016, the overall cesarean rate rose by a tenth of a percentage point to 32.0% in [...]

The winter issue of Birth includes a study that provides proof positive that physiologic care is superior to medical management. The study reports the results of Strong Start, a program providing [...]

Research has long established that hospital-level cesarean rates vary widely for reasons that cannot be explained by variations in their patient populations. Theorizing that the challenges of [...]

Consumer Reports announces the publication of the latest U.S. birth statistics. The 2016 cesarean rate was 31.9%, continuing a decline for the fourth year in a row, but don’t break out the [...]

UPI has published an article on the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) data analysis, “Perspectives on risk: Assessment of risk profiles and outcomes among women planning community birth [...]

If you’ve ever wondered how much could be accomplished if a hospital made a concerted effort to reduce cesareans—and not because an insurance company held a metaphorical gun to its head—this [...]

A study in the most recent issue of Birth provides eye-opening illumination on non-medical reasons for high cesarean rates (Kennedy 2016). Investigators at Yale’s med-school affiliated hospital [...]

Italian obstetricians report that replacing standard management of slow labor with a physiologic approach greatly reduced cesarean deliveries and the use of other medical interventions in [...]