Very cool, if true

2. You can call it racist, but it would have put white women at risk rather than women of color.

_The Frailty Myth_ has it that upper class Victorian women were expected to move so little that they had trouble giving birth, so special lightweight exercises were invented for them.

Shades of Heinlein: I think it was _Time Enough for Love_ which had the idea of a pulse of high gravity (artificial gravity on a spaceship) to get the baby out.