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observed among low obstetric risk births, especially among more educated women in, for example, Brazil and China,” noted a detailed, near-global survey by the Lancet in 2018.[4] That would be acceptable if there were some demonstrable “value added” from such procedures being widespread, but there isn’t. “Cesarean section use has increased over the past 30 years in excess of the 10–15% of births considered optimal, and without significant maternal or perinatal benefits,” noted the Lancet report.[5] Even the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists raised, in 2014, “significant concern that cesarean delivery is overused.”[6] “If we want to find safe alternatives to obstetrics, we must rediscover midwifery,” Odent told a birthing conference in 1986, when the medical profession in North America was still fighting a tooth-and-nail battle to keep midwives from fulfilling their traditional role. In many jurisdictions that struggle is far from over, while in many others there reigns a grudgingly observed truce, at best. “To rediscover midwifery is the same as giving back childbirth to women,” Odent added. “Imagine the future if surgical teams were at the service of the midwives and the women instead of controlling them.”[7] In effect, he was suggesting that medicine be Nature’s attendant, not its ruler—a radical reinterpretation of the phrase “attending physician.” The issue is autonomy, an indispensable human need. Birthing practices express the hidden or overt values of a culture in terms of who wields power and how much genuine control people are able to exercise over their own bodies. Modern research finds that maternity-care interventions may disturb hormonal processes, reduce their benefits, and create new challenges.[8] What then, I asked Sarah Buckley—a New Zealand–based physician, advocate, and author of a highly regarded overview of the normal physiology of childbearing—explains the rapidly growing rates of medicalized interference? I expected an answer based purely on medical concerns. In fact, her response was sharply perceptive as to how acculturation into the much broader myth of normal takes place. “Doctors,” Dr. Buckley said, “are the agents of our society’s expectations that we imprint on mothers, when they are very open and vulnerable, that technology is superior to the body and that