Many doctors and midwives have strict restrictions on how far past the due date you can go before they'll induce labor. Some let you go 1 week, others 2 weeks. Many natural birth advocates claim that this is somewhat bogus because due date predictions are very rough estimates and are subject to a lot of change. I'm not educated on the methodology of predicting due dates to have an educated opinion, so I thought I'd put it to the community...
Are due dates an accurate measurement of babys maturity (or over-maturity)? Has their accuracy improved over time with new methods? Should they relied on any more than a rough guestimate of when the baby has become mature or over mature to the point of requiring induction?
(I'm not trying to incite a flamewar over natural child birth, I just want facts)