By now you’ve probably already heard about Savita — the woman who died of a miscarriage because a Catholic hospital refused to perform a life-saving abortion. This led to some discussion of the consequences of letting God decide. And Brett Cottrell has a very interesting personal experience of being lucky to have avoided such a tragedy:

Many painful hours later, exhausted from blood loss, she lay frightened atop a heap of bloody sheets and towels, scared that she would die, terrified that she would never see her young children again. She was shocked when the doctors finally told her she would bleed to death if she did not terminate her pregnancy. They brought her abortion papers to sign and rushed her into surgery. The short story is that they saved my motherâ€™s life. The real story is more than that, though. By valuing my motherâ€™s life enough to save it, the doctors saved my life, too. If she hadnâ€™t had a safe and legal abortion, my younger brother and I would not have been born, and my older siblings would have lost their mother before they could even write her name.

The other big topic was analysis of the recent US election. (I think we may have found our 2012 X-Mormon of the year!!) Romney’s initial reaction got points for graciousness, but then he had to spoil it.

Personally, I feel like one of the biggest failures of the current US political system is the fact that the Republicans — instead of giving valuable reality-based criticism of the president — decided to move to fantasy land. The fact that some on the right are heeding this wake-up call is one of the most positive developments I could have hoped for:

This election proved that most ordinary people are not as susceptible to hysterical fear-mongering as might have been previously believed. The GOPâ€™s failure to present a reasoned, sober-minded critique of Obama produced these results more than anything Obama himself did.

Then, of course, there’s the Petraeus scandal. Via Kuri I learned that the focus has zeroed in on his lovers’ characters, despite the fact that Petraeus himself has been imposing Christian programs on military personnel (to strengthen marriage…?).

But the funniest political discussion this week has got to be the secession petitions. Don’t miss the comments:

I’m sorry, Gen’l, but I am not going to sign yer pettytition. Because just ALLOWING Texass to secede (I believe that “separate” is the new dogwhistleword, because “secession” did not poll well in Frank Luntz focus groups. Memories of the Past Unpleasantness and all…) would be too easy on them. People don’t appreciate what they get for free. That’s the whole problem with the Kenyan 47% TakerCulture, after all. Unless Texassers have to fight for their freedom, in bloody engagements where militias of guys armed with pistols and deer rifles are slaughtered by withering automatic weapons fire from squads of trained Yankee soldiers and black attack helicopters provided by the United Nations, as they try to overrun places such as the Amarillo nuclear bomb plant, liberty just won’t mean anything to them.

Some blogs define their own conversations. Invictus Pilgrim has been writing an interesting series on homosexuality and Theology. (Related: a Biblical precedent for female Deacons?!) Polygamy Chic photographed rock-wall polygamists. Then there was an interesting side theme: exorcism. And Doves and Serpents has been doing a series on Caitlin Moran’s book How to Be a Woman. Not only does it make me want to read the book, it also makes me wish there were more writers here at MSP so we could do a thematic series like that!! Folks, I’m sorry if the (temporarily) ugly design is driving you away from signing on as a regular writer here!! (If you are courageous enough to brave the (temporarily) ugly design and contribute a post, email me: chanson dot exmormon at gmail dot com.)

And now for the grab bag!!

When the Mormons just won’t let you go. Reflections on strange ideas seeming normal. The joys of being a delegate. Thoughts on a Mormon football star at Notre Dame and on the Utah grid system and on being a non-conforming Mormon woman. Can you objectively measure modesty?

And one last note to wrap up: please bear with me for the look-and-feel of the server. It has been this weirdly stressful thing hanging over my head for a year just to get the site functioning on my own server. Like all such things, it turned out it wasn’t as hard as I’d imagined it, and probably would have gone a lot faster if I hadn’t spent so much time exploring the Nether on the exmo Minecraft server to procrastinate. Anyway, I’d like to take a little breather before jumping in and fixing the look-and-feel.

Happy reading and have a great week!!