Also, if you factor in fetal deaths after 28 weeks’ gestation, which would eliminate different ways of counting which babies are stillborn and which died after birth, the U.S. looks a little better but is still below average.

That’s arguably a better measure of maternal care than infant mortality in any case. The problem is that such stats aren’t universally kept, and are even less uniform than infant mortality stats — there are other thresholds than 28 weeks, for example.
As for why U.S. stats are so poor, one factor is teenage pregnancy. Teens who become pregnant before their bodies have finished maturing have a higher complication rate, and higher fetal mortality. Given that the U.S. has a higher teenage pregnancy rate than most of the developed world, this is something else to be considered.

I’m looking into this some more, because the righties are still in denial and I think we’re possibly all short on facts. However, I found one table that shows that if you compare the infant mortality rate for only white U.S. infants, the U.S. rates are closer to that of other industrialized nations. But African Americans have a considerably higher infant mortality rate (even though, I assume, the rate is calculated the same way as for whites), which raises the average.

Also, if you factor in fetal deaths after 28 weeks’ gestation, which would eliminate different ways of counting which babies are stillborn and which died after birth, the U.S. looks a little better but is still below average.

Final question I have is whether the rates of drug and alcohol use by mothers in this country can be factored into the mix. It seems obvious to me that poor prenatal care is the largest factor, but you know someone on the right will suggest that it is the drug and alcohol use by poor (and not so poor) mothers in this country that explains the low rankings.

Surely there is drug and alcohol abuse elsewhere. We don’t have a lock on it.

The good thing about typo’s is that they can serve in a subtle way to allow others to feel good about themselves without ever being aware that their intellect has been stroked.

I disagree. Although there are many similarities which appear on the surface in a comparison between the two;a closer examination for differences reveals that the religious right possesses a deeper, more penetratingly gnarled sexuality. I can’t offer a link to support my assertion because I generally don’t make record of sites that espouse or support crippling ideas.
But if anybody is interested in taking a closer look at the demon of religious sexuality they might begin by googling: Onanism, Christian support groups for martial relationships devastated by Onanism, Sexual purity in Christ, Westboro Baptist Church, Exorcizing sexual demons.

I love the way some commenters make statements like the above without providing facts, links, sources, contexts, or any other form of elucidation.

Taken as a whole, maha’s post lets out the political Right’s dirtiest little secret: they’re no different from the religious Right, in that they want to control who has sex and how we have it. The subsequent Rightie comments indicate they’ve reached this insane pass because they have no interest in reality.

Exactly my point. There are some differences in the way different nations determine their infant mortality rates, but these differences have a negligible impact on the numbers. At most they’ll move a nation from 5.0 to 5.1 deaths per 1,000 infants. And, as you say, the health experts take these differences into account. They are not, as Brian suggests, comparing apples to oranges.

The idea is that the U.S. infant mortality rate includes births where the infant has a heartbeat but never breathes, while some other countries would count such a birth as a stillbirth.

In any case, the fraction of stillbirths where the ambiguity comes into play isn’t large enough to throw the ranking off by much — Brian is surely blowing smoke with his claim that the Japanese, with an official rate of half the U.S., in reality have a higher rate. Although stillbirth is common (around 8.7/1000 in the U.S.), the number of ambiguous cases is going to be considerably smaller than his claim would require — it appears that the vast majority of stillbirths are indeed “still.” You aren’t going to make up the 3.24/1000 difference in infant mortality between the U.S. and Japan with what’s left.