Table 1 The biomedical model of care in maternal health

• This model was established as a result of birth shifting from a domestic practice led by women to an institutionalized event handled by HCPs in increasingly functional health systems during the 19th and 20th century [22, 34]

• It is characterised by:

 • The medicalization of women’s body [35] and their reproductive functions [32, 36, 37], which translates to pregnancy and birth being treated like a disease rather than a physiological process. The pathologization of birth was criticised by feminist theories and the feminist movement as it was considered to legitimise the expansion of medical control at the expense of women’s agency and preferences [22]

 • The separation of the biological aspects of reproductive processes from the emotional and subjective ones [38]

 • Pregnancy and birth controlled by HCPs in a clinical environment, with a doctor-centred care and decision-making process in maternity wards [39]. This aspect of the biomedical model has been challenged in some high-income countries, in which birth is assisted by different cadres—for example, midwives—and with several concurrent degrees of institutionalization and medicalization [40]