Hats off the HCA Corporation of America for looking at outcomes of elective deliveries at term. In a study reported in the Feb. 2009 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the authors looked at outcomes of almost 18,000 births in 27 hospitals during a 3 month period in 2007. Rather than looking at the already well-known risks to late pre-term infants, they looked at outcomes of babies born at 37, 38, and 39 weeks gestation. They concluded that current ACOG guidelines prohibiting elective deliveries before 39 weeks should be strictly enforced. For me, the major weakness in this paper is the author’s assertion that there are “well-defined risks of allowing pregnancy to proceed beyond 39 weeks” (an allegation not studied in this paper).