[Labor and birth: understanding the nurse insertion possibilities]

This has the objective of understanding the insertion of the nurse in the proposals and public policies of assistance in the birthing process. It has a qualitative nature, phenomenological approach and uses as sources official documents, nursing periodicals, books, and newspapers. The hermeneutic process revealed that the nurse's role occurred as occupation characterized by repeated actions focused on reducing the mother-child mortality rate. However, the vision of this reality made it possible for the professionals and researchers to find ways that would allow a re-insertion of the nurse sustained by a scientific knowledge and effective practices such as curricular changes, emphasis on the legality of the professional practice, and demands for human resource polices from the various governmental authorities. All of these happenings give us the understanding of an ambiguous course in which the obstetric nurse looks to public opinion for orientation in a projecting of herself to other possibilities more typical of her professional action.