Number one, I made an assumption in Bowser's favor that all of those women were actually denied care they were looking for. If you included a category of women who chose to give birth at home with relatives in attendance, those who chose to give birth someplace not formally recognized as a "birth center," or any situation that didn't fit comfortably into the categories where the circumstance was a matter of choice, the number would be smaller.

Number two, the point, and I actually referred to it as "the main point," was that a nation that DOES have government health care, and has been bragged up here as a great system, has numbers that are worse. Bowser, with his usual preference for his own imagination over the facts, assumed that of course the United States must have far more women in such dire circumstances. Correcting for population, under the most generous assumptions, he was wrong.

As for "what number is acceptable?" Turn that around. If 1 in 576 births is still too large, what number is small enough to not justify turning over the health care system to the State, which, I again point out, seems to be no guarantee of a solution?

I'm sure you could find American women who gave birth in taxis and elevators. In this country, those things still make the news. The reason individual anecdotes (my second cousin, somebody I know at work, a gynecolegist who lost his job) are so popular in this debate is that when you start looking at the real numbers, the entire thing blows up in the face of those who demand that the government run our health care.