Feb 18, 2023 3 min read

Throughout the majority of human history, giving birth to a baby has been a dangerous pursuit.

Hundreds of years ago, when knowledge of pregnancy and childbirth was still largely shrouded in mystery, as many as 30% of all women would die while giving birth. Even in times that are more recent, maternal mortality rates hovered at a rate that would stagger us now. Walk through the older section of any large burial ground like Washington Cemetery in North Franklin Township, and it’s not at all uncommon to find stones that bear the names of women who perished in their late teens, 20s or 30s – prime childbearing years. Granted, accidents, disease or any number of other misfortunes could have befallen these women, but it’s a good bet that childbirth ended their lives when they were not too far removed from being children themselves.

According to the most recent data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, about 17 women die in childbirth or shortly after for every 100,000 births in the United States. That’s a lot better than it once was, of course, but consider this: In countries like New Zealand, the Netherlands and Norway, it’s about 1 in 100,000. Canada has about 8 deaths in every 100,000. Among developed nations, America has a lot of work to do to catch up to its peers.

Last weekend, The New York Times highlighted another troubling aspect of giving birth in the United States: According to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, mothers and their newborns who are Black are more likely to die regardless of their economic status. Even if a Black woman is in a high-income household, she is more likely to die than a white woman in a low-income household. Maya Rosin-Slater, an economist at Stanford, told the Times that the higher rate of Black mortality suggests “it’s much more structural.”

Experts point to the stress of racism, air pollution in largely Black communities, a lack of Black doctors and other social and economic factors as being culprits. Low-income women in the United States, regardless of race, also have inconsistent access to prenatal and postnatal care. It should also be noted that some Southern states, such as Alabama and Kentucky, have a maternal mortality rate as high as 30 deaths per 100,000 births.

Sarah Miller, a health economist at the University of Michigan, told the Times, “Even with varying ways to measure maternal mortality, the U.S. does not perform well on any analysis of this sentinel measure of a society’s health.”

Health systems are not perfect in other countries right now. To cite one example, Britain’s single-payer system has recently been experiencing excruciating wait times for ambulances, emergency care and hospital beds. But it’s clear from the statistics on maternal mortality that we have a lot of work to do on improving our health system here at home.