Hi Jase!
Thanks for reading, responding, and bringing up some great points.
1. Yes, I am very grateful to live in a nation with such exceptional reproductive healthcare. It truly is unbelievable. My wife is pregnant with our fourth child and it is amazing how much noticeably better things are now than when we had our first child.
The good news is that even in the states where abortion is restricted, world-class reproductive healthcare is still available.
The bad news is that in America we have a very unhealthy population who tend to postpone childhood until extremely late in life, so I don't know that our health outcomes are ever going to reflect how truly amazing the care is.
I'm also happy that we live in a country where people freely give money to crisis pregnancy centers to give free supplemental care to people who need it. Maybe the reversal of Roe will cause a greater outpouring of generosity (maybe I'm being too optimistic there).
It's also worth noting that abortion restrictions don't tend to place limits on healthcare, just on killing the infant in the womb. As a pro-lifer, I don't see anything immoral about a dilation and evacuation procedure if it's a medical intervention used to remove a stillborn child. I only oppose it when it's used to kill a live child in the womb by dismemberment. Even if my home state were to prohibit abortion, chances are the procedures would still be available as health care.
2. One amazing thing that we are already seeing is that attitudes towards sex are changing. Shortly after the supreme court decision, abstinence was trending on twitter.
If women start to lose access to abortion (because remember, right now most women in America still have access to abortion, although in some cases they may need to cross state lines to get it), they might start making more responsible choices that they wouldn't have if abortion was a fallback.
This is something that Thomas Sowell often critiques the left about. The left enacts a policy that it thinks is compassionate, but they don't consider the fact that when you make a change, people respond. Sowell says that the left often view people like pieces on a chessboard that enlightened elites can maneuver around as they see fit. The example he usually gives is the left's observation that single mothers are in special need of help. This is true, but what was their solution? Welfare benefits to single moms. This sounds compassionate, but it's a perverse incentive. If a woman has a man in the home, she loses benefits.
Sowell likes to point out that from the end of slavery to the enactment of these kind of welfare programs, the black family was stronger than the white family (higher percent of black women married than white women, higher percentage of children born into an intact home in back families compared to white families, etc.). And this was in a time of widespread racism and legalized discrimination.
It's a similar story when talking about abortion. Abortion sounds like a great solution to a problem. Hey, a 17-year old just got pregnant, abortion can make her no longer pregnant. And we'd obviously prefer that a 17-year old not be pregnant. What could be the problem? Well, it turns out the problem is that everyone will make worse choices. They will view responsibility as optional, because now they have options.
I've always fully believed that Sowell has the right idea, but I must admit I was shocked at how quickly people started to realize they needed to be more responsible once they heard Roe was overturned. It's true that many of them were bitter, but sometimes taking your medicine is unpleasant.
3. I think what you're getting at is if I would I prefer there be no war. The obvious answer is yes. But sometimes it's not really an option and a crazed Austrian starts invading neutral countries and setting up concentration camps with gas chambers. Sometimes you need to free the slaves. Things happen. Does that mean that every conflict that America has been involved in has been a good one? No, but certainly the ones with the highest death count have been (e.g. the Civil War, WWI, WWII)
Plus, when I judge America, I'm not judging it against the hypothetical perfect country, because it's highly unlikely that such a thing could ever exist. I'm judging it against what you would expect from a powerful nation, and it seems to me like America's sins are universal (or nearly so). Again, that doesn't mean I love war. It also doesn't mean that I'll never call anything that America does wrong. It just means that I try to hold a fair standard where I don't completely condemn my country for doing bad things when every civilization has done bad things.
Yes, we had slaves in America. We also abolished slavery more than 80 years before the universal declaration of human rights prohibited to it. And we sacrificed 600,000 Union soldier to do so. Yes, I find the loss of life tragic, but it was one of the bravest things that has ever been done. Ever.
Tragically, although black people aren't slaves in America, many black people are still slaves. Today. In 2022. It might not look the same as confederate slavery, some of it is debt bondage, forced labor, human trafficking, etc. But it's still slavery, and it still exists.
Not only did we permanently abolish it, we have done a fantastic job controlling the root causes that often lead to slavery. It's very hard to capture and enslave someone in the US, because the rule of law is so strong. We also have done a really good job against poverty. I know people will protest that we still have poverty in the US, and we do, but only in a manner of speaking. Poor people here may be relatively less well off and have many financial hardships, but they get generous government benefits, probably have iphones, and are far more likely to be obese than rich people. Those aren't exactly the kind of conditions where you'd consider selling yourself into slavery.
I believe about 765 million people worldwide live in extreme poverty, which is defined as making less than the equivalent of $1.90 a day in US dollars. That's more than twice the population of the US, and I can basically guarantee you that none of them live in the US, where welfare benefits alone are way higher than that. Not to mention our $7 an hour minimum hourly wage (it might even be higher by now).
No, I'm not a fan of needless death, and there certainly has been some of that because of American foreign policy (both American deaths and deaths on the other side). But honestly, the VAST majority of deaths have come from wars that had to be fought.
I do hope there comes a time where no more war is needed, but Russia's invasion of Ukraine shows that we still aren't there.
But yes, I FULLY agree with your last statement that a commitment to valuing life needs to go beyond banning abortion. That's a bullseye on your part.
Anyway, let me know if you have any more thoughts or responses, this has been fun and thanks again for your reply! I know tone doesn't always come through in writing, but I really enjoyed working through some of these issues because they are important and I love the opportunity to share my side
