There's no doubt that C-sections etc. have saved huge numbers of lives. On the other hand, the US actually doesn't have great maternal mortality rates for child

There's no doubt that C-sections etc. have saved huge numbers of lives. On the other hand, the US actually doesn't have great maternal mortality rates for childbirth for a developed country: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/apr/12/maternal-mortality-rates-millennium-development-goals http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/apr/12/materna... (slightly out of date but not ridiculously). It also has a high C-section rate for a developed country. Not necessarily causal, but once you've covered the clear emergencies, it's often not clear when to intervene and when not to (and I say this as somebody who was very glad that there there were obstetricians down the corridor even though both my births were natural!) and there are measures that matter beyond maternal and baby mortality.