The maternal mortality ratio (MMR) in the United States is significantly higher than in countries with similar healthcare spending per capita and continues to rise despite efforts to examine and prevent maternal deaths. Further, the burden of this increased MMR is disproportionately carried by non-Hispanic Black mothers and other race and ethnicity minority populations in the United States. Control over pregnancy is a primary prevention for maternal mortality, however, the examination of the role of contraception access in maternal mortality in the United States is limited. Given the complex history of contraception care in the United States, including a history of coercion and eugenics in minority and vulnerable populations, contraception access and uptake in the US is not simply an issue of supply matching demand. Rates of the most highly effective forms of contraception are lowest in the population of mothers most at risk for maternal mortality. Globally, the role of contraception uptake in lowering maternal mortality is well established and family planning generally is cited as the most powerful intervention to mitigate rising maternal mortality ratios. In the US, population statistics on the role of contraception in maternal mortality are difficult to measure given the relatively low number of deaths when compared to global studies. Instead, a case-by-case review of each maternal death occurs in most states by Maternal Mortality Review Committees made up by inter-professional expert panels. Most committees use the Maternal Mortality Review Information Application (MMRIA), a common data collection application. The goal of MMRCs and the MMRIA is to identify actionable trends in maternal deaths that could produce policies that work to prevent future deaths. While the MMRIA documents detailed information about maternal death, including the factors which lead to death and how they could be prevented in the future, there is no examination of the role of reproductive choice. Examining access to family planning and contraception with every maternal death would inform prevention policy by identifying barriers to contraception use in cases that lead to pregnancy-related death. The first step in adding a pregnancy prevention section to the MMRIA is a stakeholder analysis to examine key stakeholders and their position on an additional section. The significance of this stakeholder analysis would go beyond this addition to the MMRIA and allow other researchers to suggest additions and changes to the information application with the goal of producing a data collection tool that best informs future maternal mortality prevention policy
