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Articles on Maternal deaths

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Maternal death rates are higher in the U.S. than in other high-income countries. Tetra Images/Getty Images

Risk of death related to pregnancy and childbirth more than doubled between 1999 and 2019 in the US, new study finds

Black women died during or soon after pregnancy at higher rates than any other racial group in every year from 1999 to 2019. American Indian and Alaska Native women had the greatest increase in risk during this period.
Maternal and infant health crises are growing worse in the U.S. LWA/Dann Tardif/Digital Vision via Getty Images

US preterm birth and maternal mortality rates are alarmingly high, outpacing those in all other high-income countries

A March of Dimes report gave the US a grade of D+ for maternal and infant health care, highlighting that the national preterm birth rate hit 10.5% in 2021, a record 15-year high.
In an ectopic pregnancy, when the growing embryo causes a uterine tube rupture like the one in this micrograph, the patient could die from internal bleeding or infection without emergency surgery. Cultura RM Exclusive/Michael J. Klein, M.D./Image Source via Getty Images

What is ectopic pregnancy? A reproductive health expert explains

Treating a potentially deadly pregnancy complication gets caught up in the abortion debate. A nurse-midwife explains why it shouldn’t.
Morningstar Mercredi, pictured on November 16, 2018, woke up from a surgery at 14 and discovered her developing baby was gone. What remained was an incision from her panty line to her belly button, cut without her permission. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

Canada’s shameful history of sterilizing Indigenous women

Recent revelations of the coerced sterilization of Indigenous women in Canada are part of a long, complex and disturbing history – in which feminism became a fight to keep one’s own children.
In this 2012 photo, a midwife holds a newborn baby boy she has just delivered by flashlight in Guinea-Bissau. The African country is one of the deadliest places in the world to give birth, with a high rate of maternal death. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

The truth about maternal death

It’s not just women in impoverished countries dying in childbirth. The maternal death rate in both Canada and the U.S. has risen, particularly among Indigenous and African-American women.

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