Pregnancy and childbirth have an enormous impact on the health of women, newborns, and families, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and socio-econonomically. Midwives are experts in normal birth and adept at ensuring excellent outcomes for women and infants. In every setting, midwife-led maternity care results in reduced infant and maternal mortality and morbidity, fewer medical interventions, decreased costs, increased savings, and improved client satisfaction.
The safety and benefits of midwifery care have been proven again and again in countries across the world, including the United States. World Health Organization statistics show that births attended by midwives have lower infection rates, lower Cesarean section rates, fewer complications and healthier outcomes—thus, lower overall medical costs—than physician-attended hospital births. In addition, there is no difference in infant mortality between midwife-attended and physician-attended births for low-risk women. Countries such as the Netherlands, Sweden and New Zealand, which have the best birth outcome statistics in the world, use midwives as their main maternity care providers.