We do both feel certain deaths are justifiable. I think it's hard for anyone to get around that point. It might be harder in the 21st century where most people in the Western world (which I'm counting you as part of, regardless of the technical hemisphere) have been mostly free from the kind of conflict that categorized earlier life.

It's hard for me to imagine living in a primitive, makeshift city of 150-200 people, knowing everyone by name, and seeing a roving band of raiders come through to steal, murder, and rape. But that's the situation that countless people in history have found themselves in. In that situation, it's clear that the right thing to do is to fight back. Yes, the person on the other side is a human, but they are attacking and must be stopped by any means necessary.

I think the valorization of war heroes is a practice that is baked deep into the human psyche. It's why we have adventure stories and why boys play with guns.

But of course, war is a different thing in the 21st century when we have the power to destroy each other with nuclear weapons and we have borders that other nations (mostly) respect.

So I'm not exactly where I stand on war in general. For sure it depends on the war, and even when considering an individual war there is probably the need for nuance.

I think this is an area where my thinking could use a lot of refining. I'm not sure how to deal with issues of war and tyrannical states in the 21st century.

One point that I do want to press on is that just because we settle on the general notion that in some cases ending a life is justified, doesn't mean we've satisfactorily defended our views (whether on war or abortion). We still need to defend why the given death is justifiable. Of course, when it comes to abortion, my contention is that it it's not just killing, it's murder. So that seems exceptionally hard to justify. In war, you might kill your enemy, but your enemy came out to kill you. It's still possible that the deaths are not justified in a larger sense, but each individual death is justifiable in the immediate context of active combat. With abortion...man, it's tough to see what could justify it. Yes, you could say the mother's prospects are important (and I agree, more on that later), but why would that justify abortion but not infanticide? Earlier you were mentioning consciousness, but that's not a great tool for differentiation for a few reasons:

1. I'm not sure anyone even understands what consciousness is (although I'm sure some very smart people have decent guesses)

2. Certainly, no one knows at what stage of development someone becomes conscious

3. Consciousness can be taken away from someone (e.g. by killing them: "Hey, you can't kill him, he was conscious!" "Yeah, he was conscious, but I overcame that particular obstacle.")

I believe you when you say that that you didn't mean that people are better off dead than poor. But then what was your point about poverty? You were talking about our intractable differences and you said this: "I believe that supporting existing members of society to achieve their best is far more beneficial to everyone than bringing a child into intergenerational poverty." It's possible here that you were trying to exclude the unborn when you said "everyone," but that seems like far too inclusive a word if your intention was to specifically exclude people. There's also the fact that you mention unborn children in the very next sentence (unless you meant a hypothetical child that might be conceived, but that would be an odd meaning because it wouldn't represent a disagreement between the two of us, which was your stated intention). The only way to prevent an unborn child from being born is...by killing it. Hence the question, is it better to be dead than poor? Is it better for the mother to kill her child than to do whatever sort of self-actualization she would have done if she remained childless (and even if self-actualization is the goal, it remains to bee seen whether there is a worthy contender to "raising a child" for achieving self-actualization. What better way could there be of self-actualizing than cultivating something that outlasts you? Unless we mean something rather more shallow when we talk about achieving our best)

Obviously we are in agreement that the nuclear family is critical and that the stable marriage of a man and a woman is the foundation of society. And you are 100% correct that there is an asymmetry in consequences if the union fails. But that's why we have alimony and child support. For instance, if you want to open up opportunities for women, here are two great options:

1. Fathers get default custody of their kids after divorce (or in the case of a pregnancy out of wedlock, which is probably more of what you have in mind) unless the mother can prove abuse

2. We up alimony and child support and provide stronger enforcement

That first one doesn't seem like it will likely ever happen. And true equality would demand that we either enforce 50/50 custody in every situation or flip a coin. But even though no one wants option number one, it's a better solution to the inequality of child rearing than killing unwanted kids.

I'm 100% on board with the notion that the education of women is a good thing (and is one of the major distinguishing factors between civilized societies and more regressive societies). And yes, all else equal, it would be great if they were educated in their youth. But access to education is outrageously good in the West. And I don't think you're giving your wife enough credit. It might have sucked, but I think we both know that the notion that there's no way she could have done it is hyperbole (and believe me, I can sympathize, I've watched "morning" [all-day] sickness DESTROY my wife four times. During her first pregnancy she couldn't eat anything but dry Kix cereal for months).

There is actually more than just option A and option B. Option C would be various forms of societal support, whether from governments, charities, or individuals. One of my wife's friend just adopted a baby that would have been aborted. That's option C. Unfortunately, option C is not sufficient by itself, but it is an option that's on the table.

But I'm not sure what your actual opposition to option A was. If I have understood your position up to this point (and I'll admit, there's a chance I have not), you've primarily been appealing to equality. Well, option A seems like a fantastic option for equality. Very similar to what I was arguing for earlier. I don't even think that men would have to sacrifice education and work opportunities. They might if we went with enforced 50/50 custody, but not if we went with strict enforcement of steep child support. Personally, I think it's one of the great travesties of Western civilization that men are never sufficiently held to account for their actions when it comes to unplanned pregnancy.

In fact, this is one of my arguments against abortion (although it's not usually one I lead with, because the other angle is so much more important). When abortion is legal, men can use women sexually without fear of reprisal. It would be much much much MUCH better for women if men didn't have the "get out of jail free" card that is abortion. I remember one time reading an article by a woman who was describing the reasons why she switched from being pro-choice to pro-life. The very first reason she gives was that she knows eight women who have had an abortion, and every single one did so out of duress.

Plus, when you start talking about men, you are implying that the loss of opportunity would be an undue burden. At this point, you are no longer appealing to inequality, which has been your stated grounds this whole time. Instead it sounds like the real rationalization for abortion is that children represent an unacceptable burden that people have the right to free themselves from. Well, I disagree that children are a burden, but I get that in many contexts people don't want to have a kid. But we have plenty of options. Don't have sex. Wear a rubber. Put the kid up for adoption. Killing the kid is not a responsible solution to the problem.

I agree that we shouldn't be coercive about child birth and abortion. That would imply forcing people to get pregnant or forcing them to have an abortion, neither of which happen (at least not on a governmental level in the West. Some women are raped and some are coerced by their partners to abort their children). As we've covered previously, a restriction on abortion can be technically thought of as coercive, just like literally any other law. But we are already coercive about not killing your kids. The question is whether or not we want to include all kids, or just some of them.