"This country's extraordinary record of medical advancement makes its haphazard approach to maternal care all the more scandalous and disgraceful," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA.
"Good maternal care should not be considered a luxury available only to those who can access the best hospitals and the best doctors. Women should not die in the richest country on earth from preventable complications and emergencies," Cox said in a news release.
The report, "Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the USA," notes that the lifetime risk of maternal deaths is greater in the United States than in 40 other countries, including virtually all industrialized nations.
The report also noted that severe pregnancy-related complications that nearly cause death -- known as "near misses" -- have increased by 25 percent since 1998.
Up to 40 percent of near misses are considered preventable with better quality of care, according to a 2007 study in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Minorities, women living in poverty, Native Americans, immigrants and those who speak little or no English are particularly affected, Amnesty International said.
"The thing that really struck us was that these problems hit women of color, low-income, particularly hard," said Nan Strauss, researcher and co-author of the Amnesty report. "But every woman who is going through pregnancy in this country is at risk."
Figures compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, show that black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth than their white counterparts.
White women have a mortality rate of 9.5 per 100,000 pregnancies, the CDC said. For African-American women, that rate is 32.7 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies.
