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to an overly interventional culture surrounding childbirth, with medical interventions seen as the way to get rid of the risks inherent in pregnancy and childbirth. Between 1915 and 1930, our country saw no improvement in maternal and infant mortality outcomes despite establishment of prenatal care and aseptic technique, likely due to lack of access to care and due to this over-interventionalization. In the subsequent decades, the care of our women and infants has become more methodical, evidence-based, multi-faceted and successful in creating an extremely low maternal and infant mortality rate. While obstetrics can be unpredictable, with only a few minutes to respond in certain situations, we are able to provide a humanistic, beautiful birth experience. With the safety net of high level, reliable emergent medical care that can be critical to survival of women and infants. When unpredictable emergencies occur, we have the luxury of an interdisciplinary team of highly trained professionals who also oversee a non-interventional labor course. Because we are surviving birth and childbirth, something we take for granted nowadays, we can focus our intellectual and medical resources on developing knowledge in a multitude of areas of women’s health. From counseling young girls on the menstrual cycle and prioritizing their educational development, to menopausal care; from assessment and detection of genetic risk factors to advanced robotic surgical techniques for cancer treatment; from prevention of pregnancy to aiding a couple in timing and achieving a conception, we are only touching the surface of the breadth and depth of care to which we are now privileged to have access. There is an increasingly balanced approach in the care of women in terms of assuming strengths, abilities and limitations of current medical approaches and an increasing respect and methodical inquiry into the non-physical aspects of care and what has been considered as traditional and sacred knowledge of women and healers. At the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Highland Hospital, where I feel blessed to be able to take care of women and families, I am constantly witness to a merging of the spiritual and the scientific, of the analytical and the humanistic aspects of modern medical care at multiple levels of the hospital across various specialties. This benefit is not only for women. I see men, as family members and practitioners, being more involved in the beautiful process of caring for women. Both at the start of life in the events of childbirth and the transitions associated with the end of functioning of the physical body, I witness men experiencing these events and expressing themselves from multiple aspects of their minds, intellects and souls. While there has been success in what we are able to achieve in medicine both from a scientific and humanistic perspective, we have much yet to achieve in making this care even more sophisticated and accessible to more human beings in our country and the world at large. As our scientific knowledge advances, and our language develops to be able to express the dynamics of the interface between the physical and non-physical, the modern and the traditional, the male and female characteristics of our cultures, I foresee a beautiful future where we have a sophisticated continuum of knowledge and care that allows us to tap into the healing potential at multiple layers of our anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, spirituality and energies even to the quantum levels. As women, I feel we are uniquely gifted to engage in this process of further development and creation of the healing arts and dissemination of this healing throughout the planet. Dr. Prativadi practices at Madonna OBGYN she can be reached at www. madonnaobgyn.com or by calling (585) 698-7077.