Making Room at the Table for Obstetrics, Midwifery, and a Culture of Normalcy Within Maternity Care.

The principle of avoiding the worst possible outcomes guided the enormous successes of modern obstetrics in reducing the morbidity and mortality of childbirth. The challenges of improving the quality of childbirth today has prompted health care providers, policymakers, and patients to ask whether this principle is in fact preventing us from supporting the normal processes of childbirth, resulting in undue intervention and potentially causing harm. In this commentary, we suggest that recognizing the strengths of the medical model of childbirth does not preclude looking outside of it to meet the maternity care needs of the majority of healthy, low-risk women.