Interesting review in the TLS of three books that together seem to provide a pretty solid summary of the state of knowledge about past and present childbirth, and reproductive technology.
A couple of samples:
…infant mortality jumped 50 per cent between 1915 and 1929 in the United States in lockstep with the widespread across-class shift from home to hospital.
[Today] Women are 70 per cent more likely to die in childbirth in the US than in Europe.
And it seems not all of the latter figure can be put down to poverty – bad medicine has quite a bit to do with it as well.
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