In 1953, Virginia Apgar published the article "A Proposal for a New Method for Evaluation of the Newborn Infant" about her method for scoring newborn infants directly after birth to assess their health and whether medical intervention was necessary. Apgar worked at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, New York, as an obstetrical anesthesiologist, a physician who administers pain medication during childbirth. In that capacity, she sought to reestablish clear scoring guidelines for newborn infants so that she could compare which obstetric practices, pain relief methods, and resuscitation methods worked the best during and after childbirth. She published her article in Current Researches in Anesthesia and Analgesia in 1953, and the Apgar scoring system is still used in hospitals around the world as of 2016. In the article, Apgar establishes a scoring system for newborn infants that allows for quick assessment of their health directly after birth and therefore swift intervention by medical personnel to promote healthy development.

Jesse Bennett, sometimes spelled Bennet, practiced medicine in the US during the late eighteenth century and performed one of the first successful cesarean operations, later called cesarean sections, in 1794. Following complications during his wife’s childbirth, Bennett made an incision through her lower abdomen and uterus to deliver their infant. Bennett’s biographers report that his operation was the first cesarean section where both the pregnant woman and the infant survived. Previously, physicians used cesarean sections to save the fetus from a pregnant woman who had already died during childbirth. Bennett successfully performed a cesarean section, a procedure used worldwide in the twenty-first century when a vaginal delivery is not possible or would pose a risk to the woman or fetus.

In 1996, Michael R. Harrison published “Fetal Surgery” in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. In the article, Harrison describes the importance of fetal surgery and the techniques used to correct defects in fetuses. As a fetus develops in the uterus, it can develop abnormalities that may become debilitating or fatal. Harrison discusses cases that show how physicians can use fetal surgery to repair such abnormalities, including obstructions in the heart or urinary tract, or organs or muscles whose malformations impair function. Harrison states where knowledge is lacking within the field or where surgery would be inappropriate, such as in the modification of a cleft lip, which can be fixed after birth and as such does not merit the risks of surgery. In the article, Harrison provides a summary of what information existed about fetal surgeries in 1996, which helped physicians explore fetal surgery and make further advancements.

In July 2015, Ana J. Torvie, Lisa S. Callegari, Melissa A. Schiff, and Katherine E. Debiec published “Labor and Delivery Outcomes Among Young Adolescents,” hereafter “Labor and Delivery Outcomes,” in the American Journal for Obstetrics and Gynecology. The authors conducted a study using birth certificate data and hospital records in the state of Washington to compare the frequency and outcomes of cesarean and surgically assisted vaginal births among different age groups of pregnant people. They found that adolescents aged eleven to fourteen years are less likely to require cesarean or surgically assisted births but that their neonates were more likely to have birth-related complications than those of adults aged twenty to twenty-four years. While previous studies had yielded conflicting results, “Labor and Delivery Outcomes” reports generalized trends about young adolescents in labor and delivery. The researchers’ findings support future physicians in making more informed considerations for the care of pregnant patients under the age of fifteen.

In 2008, Barranca Productions released a documentary called The Business of Being Born, detailing the topic of childbirth. Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein produced and directed the documentary. The documentary explores pregnancy related healthcare in the US, including the history of midwives and obstetrics. The film also discusses potential consequences of medicalized childbirth common in the twenty-first century. The Business of Being Born provides viewers with information about home-births, midwives, and the positive and negative aspects of going to the hospital for childbirth.

In 1980 the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) released a report titled, “National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Conference Statement September 22–24, 1980.” The report lists recommendations for birth delivery through cesarean sections, a surgical procedure used to deliver the fetus via the pregnant woman’s abdomen. The recommendations arose from the 1980 Consensus Development Conference on Cesarean Childbirth in Bethesda, Maryland. Medical professionals, consumers, and biomedical research scientists attended the conference, and the NIH’s taskforce on the subject helped facilitate discussions regarding the safety of cesarean sections. The NIH taskforce concluded that cesarean section rates can be decreased and possibly reversed in addition to improving maternal and fetal outcomes and provided recommendations for future research on cesarean sections.

In 2004 Mark Landon and his colleagues in the United States published “Maternal and Perinatal Outcomes Associated with a Trial of Labor after Prior Cesarean Delivery,” which compared the risks of vaginal delivery and cesarean section for delivery of a fetus after a previous cesarean delivery. During a cesarean section, a physician surgically removes a fetus from a pregnant woman through an incision in her abdomen. By the late 1900s, most clinical guidelines viewed attempting a vaginal birth after a previous cesarean delivery as a reasonable option for most women. Yet, physicians often noticed an increased risk of uterine ruptures as more patients underwent vaginal deliveries following previous cesarean sections. As such, many physicians continued to recommend cesarean deliveries for women who had a past cesarean section. Landon and his team evaluated the risks of both delivery methods and published their results in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2004. In “Maternal and Perinatal Outcomes,” the authors found that there was no significant difference between the risks of vaginal birth after cesarean and repeat cesarean sections, providing more evidence for clinical guidelines recommending vaginal births after cesarean sections.

In the May 1996 edition of The Annals of Surgery, John A. Morris and his collaborators published “Infant Survival After Cesarean Section for Trauma,” in which they evaluate the use of emergency cesarean sections for the treatment of pregnant trauma patients. During a cesarean section, a physician removes a fetus from a pregnant woman through an incision in her abdomen and uterus. When a pregnant woman experiences trauma, physicians can perform an emergency cesarean section to remove the fetus and administer medical treatments that would not be possible while the woman is pregnant. In their article, Morris and his colleagues examine the fetal outcomes following emergency cesarean sections to determine when the procedure should be used in a trauma setting. The authors support the use of emergency cesarean sections in trauma patients when those patients demonstrate high degrees of maternal and fetal distress. Morris and his team’s article is one of the first to focus on how trauma affects third trimester pregnancies and to develop an algorithm to help physicians treat those patients.

Margaret Ann Bulkley, under the male pseudonym James Barry, was one of the first female obstetricians in early nineteenth century British Empire. She was the first person to perform a cesarean section in South Africa. Cesarean section is a procedure in which a doctor cuts into the uterus of a pregnant woman to retrieve the fetus during complicated births. Bulkley hid her gender and lived life as the male Barry to practice medicine, an opportunity not allowed to women at the time. Barry's position as a Medical Inspector with the British Army enabled her to travel the world as a physician and to practice surgical techniques including the removal of fetuses during complicated births.

In 1952 Virginia Apgar, a physician at the Sloane Women’s Hospital in New York City, New York, created the Apgar score as a method of evaluating newborn infants’ health to determine if they required medical intervention. The score included five separate categories, including heart rate, breathing rate, reaction to stimuli, muscle activity, and color. An infant received a score from zero to two in each category, and those scores added up to the infant’s total score out of ten. An infant with a score of ten was healthy, and those with low scores required medical attention at birth. Apgar originally used the score to determine how infants responded to the pain-relieving drugs given to pregnant women during labor. But it also served to determine when the infant required medical assistance, especially oxygen resuscitation. As of 2016, nearly every hospital in the world uses an updated Apgar score to evaluate the health of newborn infants. The Apgar score has allowed for medical personnel to evaluate an infant directly after birth on an objective scale to determine whether that infant could benefit from possibly life-saving medical intervention.