More women dying in childbirth in the U.S. than almost anywhere else

Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are endless controversies in the U.S. about contraception, rape and abortion, with politicians and activists of every stripe chiming in endlessly. But there's not much discussion of women dying in childbirth.

Maybe there should be. 

A new study released by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and published in the latest issue of The Lancet  finds that there are only eight countries in the world where maternal mortality rates have risen since 2003, including Afghanistan, countries in Africa and Central America – and the United States.

In 2013, 18.5 mothers in the U.S. died for every 100,000 live births, compared to 7 deaths per 100,000 in Saudi Arabia, 8.2 in Canada and 6.1 in the United Kingdom.

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