High-Tech Obstetrics, Colonialism, and Childbirth Choice in Late Twentieth-Century Canada

Developed in the United States in the late 1950s and 1960s, the electronic fetal monitor (EFM) was increasingly used in obstetric practice throughout North America by the 1970s. In identifying and delineating the "normal" fetal heart rate, EFM played a central role in defining obstetric risk and, in the eyes of many practitioners, quickly became an essential tool of "modern" and "safe" hospitalized birth. Focusing on one specific settler-colonial context, this article explores the relationship between obstetric technologies including the EFM and the childbirth "choices" available to mothers giving birth in late twentieth-century Canada. As smaller hospitals, health centers, and nursing stations, particularly in rural, remote, and northern areas, lacked access to what were framed as essential technologies, obstetric services were withdrawn from many communities, a shift that continues to disproportionately affect Indigenous mothers who are routinely evacuated out to give birth in provincial hospitals.