Yeah, we do seem to uncover lots of points of agreement.

In fact, I'll start by responding to one: Our joint recognition that polocies can keep people trapped in poverty and our desire to avoid this. Of course, this is where it gets hard, because as far as I know, no society has ever eradicated poverty. And as a fallable human, I'm not 100% sure I can distringuish what helps from what hurts.

That's really a major crux of the problem. helping people in need is a beautiful and good thing, but there's a point at which your help hurts. One easy example is "welfare cliffs" where additional work is disincentivized because people don't want to lose their benefits.

To me, it's not clear whether access to abortion really helps women or if it's the kind of "help" that actually hurts women (and men). First of all, the notion that your economic self-determination is more important than your responsibility as a mother, your child's life, and the father's rights is...a stretch.

Imagine if the single mom of a 1-month old left her child out in the woods to die. She did this because she was pusuing her economic self-determination, which the infant represented an obstacle to. We would all clearly say this was wrong (and that it was murder). But if economic self determination is powerful enough to justify abortion, why isn't it powerful enough to justify infnticide?

I suppose one difference is that the mother of the infant has options: Like putting the baby up for adoption. But the pregnant mother has that exact same option. In fact, it's much better to make that decision during pregnancy. It's hard to find a permanent home for a child who has already been born. On the other hand, there are waiting lists to adopt unborn children.

I do realize that this would entail the woman carrying the pregnancy and delivering. But this is the natural consequence of getting pregnant. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for escaping natural consequences if possible, but not if it involves killing your child.

Back tracking, I 100% agree that while gender distinctions are real, obvious, and undeniable, there is undoubtedly is more overlap between the groups than there are differences and that the differences within groups are far larger than the differences between groups.

I also 100% agree that supporting the rights of others is what makes us civilized.

But isn't the ultimate example of being civilized extending rights to the most vulnerable, the ones who cannot stand up for themselves, the ones who are easy to ignore, to treat as sub-human, the ones you can write off because you never have to look at them in the face?

Also, going back to the notion of the help that hurts, it seems to me that removing burdens, as compassionate as it sounds, can actually fall into this category. The ideal is to find a way to help people shoulder the burdens that they have. And it's importnat to remember here, that even in the situation where a child represents a real burden, a child is never just a burden, but is a blessing as well (we can mean that in a religious or an irreligous sense if you want, it's just good alliteration with "burden").

I can't remember if we have discussed the term murder being a legal term or not. I certainly don't remember doing so (although this has been quite the epic and far-ranging conversation), and I don't think I would agree to that idea. "Murder" clearly is a legal term, but it is first and foremost a moral (or, if you prefer, philosophical) term. We have the word because we recognize that sometimes (e.g. self-defense), it's not morally wrong to end another life (and therefore on a legal level you shouldn't be liable). But most of the time it is wrong. Hence a formal definition of murder might look like the one I gave earlier, but a more converational definition might be "unjustified killing" (or maybe: "unjustifiable killing"). So yes, you're right that murder is a philisophical question. But most of the aortion-specific questions are questions of fact. Is the unborn child human? Yes. Does abortion kill it? Most abortions do. A D&E to remove a miscarriage obviously doesn't, even though a D&E is technically a kind of abortion procedure. But the kind of abortions people talk about when they debate abortions obviously do kill the child. In rare instances, the child does survive the abortion procedure and is "born." I'll let you guess what happens to these kids.

So really, the philisophical question is simply "is murder wrong"? And boy, that's a hard question to answer when people don't share a worldview. Because if all we are is matter and motion, there's no such thing as morality. Mindless matter cannot come up with moral rules to govern the behavior of beings that it doesn't even know exist. This is probably a deeper issue than we have time to get into. Unless you're up for it.

It's really encouraging to hear you say that many aspects of this make you uncomfortable. Talking about these things makes me uncomfortable as well. There are aspects of life on Earth that are really...ugly. I think in this specific instance, your discomfort is probably a healthy guide.

Switching gears slightly, I think that the main reason why we need governments and laws is to proctect each other from the darkest aspects of the human condition. If I could live in a society where the government's sole aim was to protect life and property to the exclusion of all other aims they might pursue or a country where the government saw it's primary job as to try and solve issues like poverty or to level the playing field, I would live in the former without hesistation. The most important rules that governments enforce are rules like you can't murder, rape, or steal. If they do those things really well and nothing else, it's a just and good government that can form the foundation of a prosperous society.