The introduction provides an overview of the historiography of midwifery and reproduction from which this book draws and presents the work’s central arguments: that ideals of sexual honor became imperative for an increased sector of Mexico’s female population as the nineteenth century progressed, that reproduction became a matter of public concern in republican Mexico that diverged from childbirth’s private nature in the colonial era, and that unlike in Anglo America or much of western Europe, in Mexico the professionalization of medicine did not involve the obliteration of midwifery or of pre-Columbian medical practices at least through the nineteenth century. The introduction also provides an overview of the extant statistical overview of changes in birth rates, neonatal mortality, and maternal mortality in Mexico across time, and discusses the sources, organizational logic, and methodological parameters of the book.