France trumps the United States on nearly every measure of maternal and infant health. The infant mortality rate is 57 percent lower in France than it is in America. According to UNICEF, about 6.6 percent of French babies have a low birth weight, compared with about 8 percent of American babies. An American woman’s risk of dying during pregnancy or delivery is 1 in 4,800; in France it’s 1 in 6,900.1
