Jill,
You never answered the question of whether an exception for the mother’s health in the United States under Doe v. Bolton’s current definition of health would be a giant loophole.

My answer: No.

I used the Poland example because they have the kind of health exception that anti-choicers would prefer (although I think it’s safe to say that anti-choicers would prefer no health exception). Health exceptions in the United States only apply at the point when elective abortion is banned, and they require a doctor’s consent. The vast majority of abortions happen early, when there are fewer legal limitations. The ones that happen later, at the point where abortion is highly restricted, do happen for health-related reasons, or because of severe fetal abnormalities. And these abortions are fairly rare.

You act like throngs of lazy women are going to wait around until the third trimester to finally have an abortion, and will claim “mental distress” without any backing. We have a health exception now, and there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of this happening. So if it actually is a giant loophole, and it enables women to have late-term abortions willy-nilly, I’d say that you’re the one who needs to explain why 90% of abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

The higher birth rates in Latin America and Africa may well have little to do with Catholicism (which, after all, is a minority religion in Africa anyway). For those living in developing countries, it makes more sense to have larger broods, because absent government and private pensions, the average worker has to rely on his or her children to take care of him or her in old age.

Further, even those women who want to control family size have a more difficult time doing it– marriages are more unequal, divorce is often harder, marital rape isn’t punished, and contraceptives and abortions are harder to come by and hard to afford.

When immigrants come here, they tend to have fewer children than they would have in their home countries, which is consistent with this analysis.

Again, I don’t think there are that many people who believe, as a matter of UNIVERSAL principle, that anyone who has sex under any circumstances is agreeing to an 18 year contract to take care a kid. Yes, there are some folks on the right fringes of religious groups that do believe this, but don’t assume that just because fertility rates are higher in various places, that has anything to do with these sorts of beliefs.

I had preeclampsia. This is serious stuff. And, you likely don’t know BEFORE you get pregnant that you will have it (although perhaps in some cases you may have some indicators that it may happen). Even if you know you will get it, you will not know how the condition will progress until the pregnancy proceeds. If this woman’s doctor was telling her that blindness was likely, it sounds like she was on the very severe end of the condition. This is a very serious condition. Even the mild cases are taken very seriously and can turn badly at any moment, especially during delivery.

Just because you go into a pregnancy with good intentions doesn’t mean everything is going to go well. Any pregnancy at any time can take a down turn medically and you may be forced to make some hard decisions. (Or for that matter, you may suffer some financial or emotional hit, that was unanticipated.)

A mother has to decide for herself if the risk she takes for the sake of her unborn baby outweighs the obligation she has to herself and the family she already has. That is hard enough without someone telling her she should have known the consequences to begin with. Yes, we all know sex causes babies. But no one is so all-knowing that they can anticipate the specific conditions of each pregnancy and the outcome of each birth.

In my case, I know that I’ve been preeclamptic in my two full-term pregnancies. I know that another pregnancy would be complicated (especially now that I’m older) and that it could potentially leave my two sons motherless. Death from childbirth is not a thing of the past, and my risk factors are higher than most. I take lots and lots of precautions to make sure I don’t tempt fate, but if I were to get pregnant (shit happens, even with best laid plans) I would definitely consider my options.

I think the majority of women like me are not willy-nilly having lots of crazy unprotected sex knowing that they could have potential problems with a pregnancy, but just thinking… “oh well, if I get knocked up I’ll just have an abortion”. I just don’t think that’s the reality of how most women come to the decision of whether to abort or not.

This means that when you engage in sexual conduct, you’d better be prepared for the consequences.

So what?

It never fails to astound me that the American public educational system continues to crank out people so absolutely ignorant of the intention of the seperation of church and state.

This government, although having been compelled by their own prejudice and greed, over the hundreds of years, still has a responsibility to make laws that impinge as little as possible on the liberties of the citizen.

Either the pro-lifers and their supporters still cannot see women as full citizens, thus heirs to all the rights of citizenry, or they cannot grasp that fundamental fact that their view is based on a religious tenant that they have no right to force onto others against their will.

Just restating the claims of abortion advocacy groups regarding illegal abortion without examining their methodology is the same kind of action that has led ignorant pro-choicers to claim for years that 5,000 to 10,000 women a year died from illegal abortions before Roe.

Doubting the stats that Jill cites and demanding that she prove them right or wrong is ridiculous. She has no such responsibility. If you don’t believe the stats or doubt them, do your own damn objective research to rebut them.

But who can interview dead women and dead doctors? Having abortion illegal forced it underground and proof abounds of its effects. The pro-lifers, having conceded the argument of its existence, unable to let the old horse die, pulls it out again and beats the wretched thing with another tact — degree. We know there was some damage, but it wasn’t all that bad.

Back to civics class where so many seem to have been hanging out in the back of the school puffing a biggie, or sleeping on their desks:

Since the government provides its services based on the funding of all people in this country, regardless of ethnic, religious or political standing, it seems only proper to assert that said government has an obligation to not impinge on the liberties of all such persons while simoutaneously serving the interests thereof. A difficult task indeed.

Constituents of groups or associations that form voluntarily in a social system have the right to meet out demands of conformance among them, as long as the follow basic tenants of human rights accepted universally as granted to those already living as full humans on this earth.

That doesn’t include fetuses, pre-born babies, embryoes or whatever one wishes to call those who have yet to become full human beings.

Go practice your religion with your fellow followers and leave government and the rest of us out of it.

This article on worsening myopia associated with pregnancy

It certainly is possible that pregnancy is a risk factor for women with severe myopia but I haven’t seen any information yet which points to that or that this woman giving birth caused her retinal hemorhage.

Did you read the whole second link?
“Retinal hemorrhage and papilledema in preeclampsia characterize patients with an acute, severe rise in blood pressure.” (first paragraph of the discussion section)

…it is a distinct minority of Catholics who do this.

Not in Latin America and Catholic parts of Africa.