"Tossing out the baby with the bath water": New Zealand general practitioners on maternity care.

A rapid decline in the number of general practitioners practicing obstetrics followed legislative changes in New Zealand during the early 1990s that changed the maternity care landscape. The resulting repositioning of maternity care professions has seen medical dominance give way to midwifery dominance in the maternity marketplace. Drawing on our research, we suggest that current and former general practitioner obstetricians harbor grievances relating to (1) the loss of obstetrics from the 'cradle to grave' philosophy of general practice, and (2) policies encouraging competition between maternity care providers. We argue that these perspectives represent truth games that are generated by the disciplinary blocks of the maternity care professions, and reveal the moral nature of the political economy of maternity care.