What was going on when I was born?

Faced with a growing number of malpractice claims and the rising expectations of patients, a significant number of the nation's doctors have either abandoned the practice of obstetrics or are seriously considering it. According to several experts, the care of women in pregnancy, childbirth and the period immediately afterward has become too risky financially and too draining emotionally for hundreds of specialists across the country, particularly in states like New York, Florida and California where malpractice suits are most frequent and jury awards are most generous. ''A lot of obstetricians are leaving the speciality and concentrating instead on gynecology,'' said William Reilly of New Jersey Medical Underwriters. ''Opting out of delivering babies is one way to protect yourself against the malpractice epidemic.'' Gynecologists specialize in the treatment of women's functions and diseases other than pregnancy and childbirth.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1985 International A missile defense system in space will be developed by Washington even if an agreement is reached to eliminate nuclear weapons, President Reagan vowed. (Page A1, Column 6.) False data on aid for El Salvador is being given to Congress by the Reagan Administration, according to a bipartisan Congressional caucus. The group said Congress had been supplied with ''insufficient, misleading and in some cases false information'' on the purposes and results of the aid program. The caucus said the aid was worsening El Salvador's problems and prolonging the civil war. (A1:5.)

A Congressional caucus accused the Administration today of having supplied ''insufficient, misleading and in some cases false information'' on aid for El Salvador. A report issued by the Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus, a bipartisan group, says economic and military aid, which will total at least $557 million this year, is worsening El Salvador's problems and prolonging the civil war. One reason, the report says, is that most of the spending has been military, despite Administration claims that most has been for economic and social development. It says the Administration has ''provided Congress with overly optimistic reports'' on the war.

Companies An I.B.M. profit rise will be ''very difficult'' to achieve in the first quarter, the company said. It cited the ''unrelenting strength of the dollar,'' which has hurt revenues from overseas sales. But analysts said major customers were also likely to delay purchases to await new I.B.M. products, such as the Sierra mainframe computers, which may be presented as early as today. (Page D1.) Digital Equipment has stopped making its Rainbow personal computer. The move appears to mark a defeat in the company's campaign to break into personal computers, but officials hinted that they may try again with a different product. (D4.)

VIRUSES related to those that cause common warts are coming under increasing suspicion as factors in causing human cancer of the cervix and other types of malignancy. Scientists in the United States and abroad are finding strong evidence linking some of the viruses in a family called papilloma with genital cancers, notably cancers of the cervix and vulva, and with an uncommon kind of skin cancer. The recent findings seem largely to eclipse earlier evidence linking genital cancers to herpes viruses. The virus called herpes simplex or herpes hominus type 2 has been under study for decades as a possible cause of genital cancers, but scientists say the evidence linking papilloma viruses with these cancers is now far stronger than the evidence relating to herpes. The new findings are expected to have an important impact on efforts to prevent and treat genital cancers, particularly in women. Many specialists believe that in time it should be possible to develop a vaccine against the types of papilloma virus that are under the greatest suspicion.

Combatting tax shelters has become the main priority of the Internal Revenue Service, but a question increasingly asked is whether that emphasis overstrains the agency. There is ample evidence that the efforts have brought success, in the form of billions of dollars in back taxes and increased public awareness about what I.R.S. calls ''abusive'' shelters. But new data from the I.R.S. show that the efforts are dramatically altering its auditing abilities and priorities and making it increasingly unlikely that the bureau will audit higher-income taxpayers who do not invest in abusive tax shelters. Even when taxpayers are warned by the I.R.S. that they have invested in an abusive shelter and the benefits will be disallowed, the vast majority go ahead and claim the benefits anyway.

King Fahd of Saudi Arabia urged President Reagan today to engage the United States ''more vigorously'' in the search for peace in the Middle East and to support ''the just cause of the Palestinian people.'' But Mr. Reagan told the Saudi leader at the White House that while the United States remained committed to peace efforts, priority should be given to persuading Jordan and other Arab parties to hold ''direct negotiations'' with Israel. ''It is time to put this tragedy to rest and turn the page to a new and happier chapter,'' the President said of the conflict in the region. Seeks to Revive Peace Talks In their first closed-door meeting with their advisers, Mr. Reagan told King Fahd that the United States hoped to revive negotiations but sought ''an Arab interlocutor,'' a senior American official said. The leaders will continue their talks at breakfast on Tuesday.

During a 10-hour period on a recent Saturday, Dr. Edmund Bolton treated 26 patients at the Doctors Officenter in Hanover Park, Ill., a Chicago suburb. ''In the summertime it can go up to 40 when the kids are out of school,'' he said. This day Dr. Bolton treated, among other things, a dog bite, a sheet metal cut, a nagging cold and a light case of pneumonia. These ailments are the sort that a neighborhood doctor once attended to but that increasingly have been brought to a hospital emergency room for treatment - often after a long wait, by a harried intern, at a substantial cost. The delays are not so long at the Doctors Officenter, however, nor are the doctors so burdened or the fees so high, according to advocates of this new method of treatment. The center is one of more than 2,300 walk-in, cash-on-delivery health care centers that are springing up in the nation.

At least 30 Lebanese and Palestinians working for Israel in south Lebanon have been assassinated by unidentified gunmen in the last seven weeks, according to Israeli military officials and independent security sources in south Lebanon. The slayings - of agents, informers and local militiamen - have been part of a dramatic increase in attacks on Israeli troops and their allies in south Lebanon. In the last 10 days alone there have been 51 attacks on Israeli troops in south Lebanon, with four soldiers killed and 18 wounded. That has brought Israel's total casualties in Lebanon since invading that country on June 6, 1982, to 614 dead and 3,675 wounded.

Digital Equipment said it had ceased production of its Rainbow personal computer. Page 32. The International Business Machines Corporation said yesterday that it would be ''very difficult'' for it to show any earnings growth in the first quarter of 1985, compared with the same quarter a year ago. The announcement attributed the stagnation to the ''unrelenting strength of the dollar,'' which has hurt revenues from overseas sales. But analysts said that major institutional customers were also likely to hold off purchases in anticipation of major new I.B.M. products.

After rising almost continually for a month, stock prices plummeted yesterday. But most analysts remained remarkably optimistic, saying that the setback was only a rest after which the rally would return. ''I think this is the pause that refreshes,'' said Jon Groveman, head of equity trading at Ladenburg, Thalmann & Company. Tugged downward by such big losers as the International Business Machines Corporation and Eastman Kodak, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 13.91 points, to 1,276.06, losing more than 1 percent of its value. It was the largest daily decline of 1985, and one of few sessions that saw substantial falls in broader measures of market performance. Declines outnumbered advances by a 5-to-3 margin.

''Most colleges promise to make you better culturally and morally, but it is not evident that they do.