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The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among high-income countries, although conventional statistics focus on direct obstetric causes and often omit deaths from drug overdose, suicide, and homicide. To get a more complete picture of maternal mortality in the United States, researchers examined all deaths among pregnant and postpartum women (through 6 weeks postpartum) from 2018 to 2023, as reported in the National Vital Statistics System.
There were 7901 maternal deaths from any cause, yielding a mortality rate of 34 per 100,000 live births across the study period (nearly twice the rate seen in prior CDC data restricted to causes related to pregnancy or its management).
The leading cause of death was unint…