From Antiquity, surgeons had used caesarean section as a means to extract a living fœtus if the mother died in pregnancy or childbirth. By the Renaissance, the law in France specifically stipulates that a pregnant woman cannot be buried before the foetus had been extracted, and towards the end of the century Catholic theologians insist with renewed zeal upon the urgency of having children delivered alive so they may at least be baptised and thus preserved from purgatory.

Caesareans on living women, however, remain a subject of heated controversy. A few authors speak up for them, notably Rousset, who cites a series of cases in which caesareans had apparently been successfully carried out, but the vast majority of the medical profession came down heavily against the procedure. Ambroise Paré denounced it, according to Jacques Guillemeau, after having witnessed five cases, in all of which the women died. Yet there are occasional voices of protest against the refusal to allow women this last chance of a safe delivery, among them the eloquent appeal of Jacques Duval whose first wife had died in childbirth when such an operation might just have saved her life.