One of us is a leading expert in medical liability law and policy, and the other has devoted a career to the legal and policy issues arising in health care for low-income, minority, and medically underserved populations, particularly women and children. In our experience, two perspectivesdthe political and the physician-centereddtend to dominate discussions of medical liability reform. The principal strength of the collection of articles on liability associated with maternity care by Sakala and colleagues that appears in this issue ofWomen’s Health Issues is that it takes a different approach, emphasizing evidence over ideology, and broadening (at least to a degree) the reform umbrella to include other health professionals and settings in addition to physicians. The result is to restore attention to the core health policy issues that have always deserved greater consideration in malpractice policy than they receive: Safety, quality, and accessibility of care. The authors identify seven reform aims that together could be expected to better integrate advances in maternity care with the legal environment in which maternity care takes place: 1) Reforms that generally promote safe, high-quality maternity care consistent with the best evidence and minimize avoidable harm; 2) reforms that minimize maternity professionals’ liabilityassociated fears and disaffection; 3) reforms that avoid incentivizing the defensive practice of medicine; 4) reforms that foster access to high-value, evidence-based liability insurance coverage devoid of the types of restrictions and surcharges that can impede performance; 5) fair, rapid, and appropriate system responses when women and their infants experience injury; 6) assistance to families in meeting the long term costs associated with preventable injuries; and 7) the minimization of legal and administrative costs. Based on these aims, the authors assess the considerable body of research that has been undertaken in recent decades to