Perinatal mortality: the current debate

Using the parliamentary 'Short Report’on perinatal and neonatal mortality as a focus for analysis, this paper attempts a critical examination of recent trends in perinatal health policy debate, and suggests a polemical explanation of such trends. The paper begins by outlining the major concerns of current debate and unravelling the assumptions and apparent contradictions in both‘official’and popular arguments. It then utilises a framework and perspective adopted by Lewis in her recently published analysis of Edwardian maternal and infant welfare policy, in an attempt to make sense of the major contradictions identified. The importance of considering the ideological‘ends’of social policy movements ‐ in this instance, a restating of the ideology of motherhood — over and above purported societal‘needs’— i.e. a reduction in perinatal mortality rates — is highlighted.