Are midwives safer than doctors?

In a clinical assessment that could have implications for the United States, Britain’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has concluded that it is safer for healthy women with uncomplicated pregnancies to give birth under the supervision of midwives than in a hospital maternity ward run by doctors. The reason: Doctors are much more likely than midwives to use interventions like forceps deliveries, spinal anesthesia and Cesarean sections -- procedures that carry risks of infection and surgical accidents.