I wonder how much of that is selection bias? In my (admittedly limited) experiences around the labor and delivery process, c-sections were (apart from when requested) advised for high-risk pregnancies and as a recourse for something having gone wrong in the L/D process. One could reasonably expect that both of those situations would indicate a higher risk for mortality from surgery.
Note that per Wikipedia [0], death by abdominal surgery in general in High-HDI countries is on the order of 100-1000/100k.