ABSTRACT
The invention of prenatal risk assessment in the global north was linked to the governmental objective of reducing perinatal mortality rates. In Canada, riskbased prenatal assessment became standard practice for health care providers during the late 1970s and 1980s, with particular dates varying by province and territory. As I outlined in Chapter 2, a standardized prenatal risk assessment device designed by physicians in the Ontario Medical Association and distributed by the Ontario Ministry of Health first came into use in Ontario during 1980. Called the Ontario Antenatal Record (see appendix a, b and c to this chapter), it has remained in distribution with periodic updates since that time. “Antenatal Record”: a record before birth. But whose record? Although it groups together a variety of factors – “maternal factors”, “fetal factors”, “social factors” – the Antenatal Record was devised to conserve population at the beginning of the perinatal interval. Its primary aim was to reduce perinatal mortality rather than maternal mortality, the latter being regarded as at an “irreducible minimum” when the Antenatal Record was first devised. The Antenatal Record concerted a meticulous clinical practice for the security of the living subject at the perinatal threshold.
