Labour Induction For Postdates – A Critical Review: Part 1

Induction of labour (IOL) for postdates pregnancy is an increasingly common birth intervention. Biomedical assumptions pervade medical research, influencing clinical practice. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, we examined how postdates IOL is constructed in the biomedical literature. Findings demonstrate how current biomedical literature concerns itself with ‘the dangerousness of [prolonged] pregnancy’, prioritising the safety of the fetus, highlighting the ‘invisibility of women’, and perpetuating a discourse of postdates IOL as ‘safe and necessary’, despite contested evidence about outcomes and benefits. Critiquing dominant knowledge claims gives space for other knowledges to exist, which is important in the movement towards humanising birth.