Best countries to be a mother?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/health/18glob.html?ref=health

Few surprises here: Norway is the best, Afghanistan is the worst and the US is 28th out of the 160 countries surveyed. Actually, I was surprised that we were so high. The rankings were determined based on maternal health (how many mothers died due to childbirth, but not necessarily in childbirth) and maternity benefits, amongst others. We have a ridiculously high maternal death rate in this country, partially due to the lack of prenatal healthcare for poor women. We are below all of the countries of Western Europe. We also have some of the worst maternity benefits in the world. Heck, Cuba tends to do better than we do (although the article did not mention where we are ranked in relation to Cuba) due to their support of training enough doctors. What can you do about this? Be an educated health care consumer, take care of yourself, and use a midwife instead of an ob.