Routine Episiotomy: The Rise and Fall of a Surgical Habit
How a Procedure Became Standard Without Evidence

About this book:

For generations, the episiotomy was presented as a benevolent standard of care—a small, protective cut to ease childbirth. *Routine Episiotomy* reveals the shocking truth: this intervention became a near-universal American ritual performed on millions of women without their consent and, astonishingly, without a shred of rigorous evidence to support it. From the midwife-attended home births of early America to the sterile, assembly-line hospital wards of the mid-twentieth century, this book traces how a "solution in search of a problem" was enshrined as medical dogma through habit, hierarchy, and the systemic silencing of women’s voices.

With the narrative drive of a medical thriller, the book exposes the decades-long chasm between obstetric authority and scientific reality. It chronicles the quiet courage of early dissidents, the fierce advocacy of the feminist and consumer health movements, and the landmark studies that finally proved the procedure often caused the very damage it promised to prevent. You will witness the glacial resistance of institutions forced to confront their own inertia, and the profound legal and ethical reckoning that followed when "standard practice" was exposed as surgical habit.

*Routine Episiotomy* is more than a history of a single procedure; it is a vital case study in the anatomy of medical error. It illuminates how traditions harden into truths, how patients reclaim autonomy from paternalism, and how evidence-based care is often born not from breakthrough, but from battle. Essential reading for anyone who has given birth, works in healthcare, or believes that the scalpel should never be mightier than the evidence.