Description:

Sarah Rodriguez, PhD
Lecturer in Medical Humanities and Bioethics
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Experience as Evidence: Obstetricians, Feminist Health Advocates, and Episiotomy in the 1970s

Though rarely performed in the beginning of the 20th century, during the 1950s through the 1970s episiotomy was performed routinely on American women when they gave birth. Beginning in the 1980s, however, evidence from randomized control trials began to show that the reasons traditionally given for routine episiotomy did not hold. Reacting to these studies, in 2006, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a practice bulletin calling for an end to the routine use of episiotomy, saying the “best available data do not support the liberal or routine use of episiotomy.” The uptake, rise, and fall of routine episiotomy in the United States is a story about medical evidence. In this talk, I will focus on a moment just before the new evidence in the form of RCTs emerged – the 1970s – when feminist health activists were the ones challenging the evidence supporting the routine use of episiotomies.