I didn't pick up on the fact that you are Australian in your first response. Very cool. Actually, I guess I technically still don't know if you're Australian or just in Australia. Either way, yay for the internet.

You mention the cost of American healthcare and yes, it's an issue. There are a few things that are tricky here.

First of all our population is outrageously unhealthy. I'm pretty sure we're the world leader in type II diabetes, and it turns out that type II diabetes is outrageously expensive.

We also reserve the right to sue the pants off of doctors. This is great for the victims of actual medical malpractice, but not so great for those of us who face higher costs.

The insurance system here is also hopelessly convoluted. There are some perverse incentives there as well.

Your transition to abortion as a fundamental right is a bit jarring though. I don't think people have the right to kill children in the womb. That's a bit of a bizarre concept.

You mention that I was taking things to the extremes with dismemberment. This is true in a manner of speaking. D&E abortions are by no means the majority of abortions. I think they are around 10%. But there are hundreds of thousands of abortions a year, so it's not like this is uncommon.

But it does bring up an interesting question: To what extent are the edge cases relevant? In the US, which is arguably the most permissive nation in history when it comes to abortion, the worst cases are relevant. In other words, someone who is arguing that access to abortion shouldn't be rolled back at all needs to defend the least justifiable cases.

If it were flipped and abortion was completely illegal , the shoe would be on the other foot. It would be the job of the pro-life side to defend why abortion should be illegal in the case of rape.

You mention the Australian rules require you to go through a committee for such a thing, and that does a good job highlighting the fact that the US has been the most extreme nation in terms of abortion for decades.

You say the scenario that would lead to such a procedure would be horrific, but that's not the way it is. Most abortion has no medical justification whatsoever outside of the fact that the woman wants an abortion.

You say that we must respect the lives of all involved. but the life of the mother is almost never at stake. Now, if you want to restrict abortions to just situations where the mother would die trying to deliver, fine. But otherwise, the only life in danger is the child (and it didn't start out in danger, the thing that is putting it in danger is the mom's access to abortion).

I didn't follow your logic about behavior modification. You say that men and women have always had sex resulting in pregnancy. Yes, I should sure hope so. We wouldn't be here if they didn't. Having kids is an unmitigated good. I think what you mean is that there have always been men and women that have had sex when it wasn't worth risking a baby. That's true. But how does that make it a good idea to set up perverse incentives instead of good incentives? In other words, let's say that we can never get to a state where 0% of people have unplanned pregnancies. Let's also say that right now, 50% of people have unplanned pregnancies (that's probably not close, but I'm just picking a number). It doesn't make any sense to me to say "we want to get to zero, but we'll never get there. So let's enact policies that push us towards 100%." Huh? Shouldn't we want policies that push us toward zero even if we never get there? Especially if the policy we implement involves giving people permission to kill children.

It's important to remember that every policy has consequences. They might not be the ones you intend to happen, but they will happen. It doesn't matter if you are enacting a new policy or removing it, people will react.

So far, the reaction to the reversal of Roe seems to be entirely positive. People are taking the issue of reproduction more seriously. They are considering abstinence. We might not get to the perfect ideal of universal abstinence to marriage, but moving in the right direction is something that should be celebrated.

It's like a double win, we get positive side effects by telling people they can't kill children. That's the dream.

Okay, war. You say that you strongly disagree that the wars of your lifetime are justified. I'm not sure how old you are, but I'm pretty sure I didn't mention any of the wars of your lifetime as being justified :-)

Yes, I do see similarities between Iraq and Ukraine and America and Iraq. And yes, I'm not a fan of either. Even then though, I will say that at least America's wars in the middle east had plausible grounds. There was a deadly attack on our soil, and there was some sort of intelligence (that turned out to be wrong) about weapons of mass destruction. But of course, probably twice as many American's died fighting the wars than were killed on 9/11 (and I'm sure the casualties on the other side were much higher than ours). I'm pretty sure (someone please fact check me) that more people have died in the war in Ukraine than died in 20 years of fighting in the middle east. But I might be underestimating the casualties on the Iraq/Afghanistan side.

Of course every untimely death is a great tragedy, and I am critical of our invasion. But the wars that a country fights are hard to ignore. It's easy to forget the times when a country doesn't go to war. I'm super proud of America for not going to war with Russia or Cuba during the cold war. It could have been WWIII with nukes.

But there's an important point we need to address. In your initial comment, you said you were going to give three pragmatic reasons for abortion. The third was about America's foreign policy being at odds with the view that life is valuable.

We've gotten sidetracked on this one a bit by talking about whether I am inconsistent.

In other words, here is one way to lay out your argument (which is a valid argument, even if I don't think it's right):

1. You (Matthew), claim to value human life

2. This value leads you to oppose abortion

3. But you fail to uphold it in terms of military action

4. Therefore you are inconsistent

Is that about right?

Now, as it happens, I don't think I'm inconsistent. First of all, many conflicts are fully justified, and even the ones that aren't usually had at least some measure of justification. Second, I condemn any violence that clearly had no justification. Third, while armies killing each other is sad, there is a level of consent; each side is deciding that something is worth fighting for. This is why there has always been a huge distinction between killing combatants and killing civilians. Abortion always kills an innocent bystander. Fourth, the scale of abortion is MUCH greater than war. More people are killed by abortion every year in America than died in the bloodiest war in our history.

But I think all of this is really just an interesting side track. Remember, your initial purpose was to provide a pragmatic reason for abortion. But how does all this discussion contribute for that? In other words, lets say that I admit that I'm inconsistent for opposing abortion while not considering America evil because of all the death it has contributed to through violent conflict. How is that a pragmatic reason for abortion? Wouldn't the solution be for me to change my mind about war? Abortion would still be wrong.

It's always worth testing the other side for logical consistency, but usually when you try to do this, you're either trying to point out that the person is using bad logic, or that they are applying good logic, but they are applying it unevenly because the logic compels them to reject the thing they are arguing for. In this instance, even if my logic is uneven, it's uneven when it comes to war, not abortion.

Yes, each country has their own poverty line, but the point is that being dirt poor in the US is way better than the extreme poverty found in places that actually have it.

I'm with you that there should be a safety net, but there is a safety net. And it's working. Too well. The trickiest needle to thread is that you want to provide help, but most help hurts. That's why the journalist Jason L. Riley wrote a book called "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed". You need to provide a basic safety net...and no more. If you really hate someone, one way to attack them is by doing things for them that they could have done themselves.

That's a fascinating personal story and I'm glad your dad was able to escape Nazi Germany. Hopefully you'd agree though, that while WWII itself wasn't a noble war, it was for the allies. I'm also curious of what you think of the American Civil war. Was freeing the slaves a noble purpose?

I would love to believe that we could get to a place where there is no war, but the problem of evil is not an easy one to get around. I don't want people to die in war, but man, the world would be a much worse place if we hadn't stood up to Hitler.

Hopefully your Iraqi refugee coworker got to go home