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I understand your “if it works” argument but I think it is misapplied when it comes to military plans. Remember, it is not a question of “if it works it’s okay,” it is a question of “Are we minimizing the suffering of the innocent if we do this?”

So, in a way, just war argues against abortion because abortion has as it’s singular purpose, killing the innocent, whereas “proportionality” does not allow for the deliberate destruction of the innocent. For example, our nuke targeting policy was counter-force (military targets), not counter-value (civilian targets).

“Population” can be a target in war. According to Col John Warden and his “Five Rings,” the population may be “attacked” in order to affect the enemies will and ability to fight and win. But this does not mean we are talking about slaughtering the innocent. No. We are talking about sophisticated psy-ops and other techniques to disrupt/make uncomfortable the civilian population and thereby affecting their war-making support/ability.

Take a moment to view (starting on page “298”): http://mercury.ethz.ch/serviceengine/Files/ISN/57408/ichaptersection_singledocument/65459c5f-da6c-440d-8d20-9c25ff8bfeec/en/Chapter_19.pdf

I am glad you made the important distinction between counter-force and counter-value targeting. I am not, however, convinced that the attack on Hiroshima was based on target = military assets. It seems it was target = city.

If the target was military assets, why did they not target the submarine base?

And why did they target a few hundred thousand civilians in the cities, when they could have targeted 1 - 2,000,000 troops who were being massed on the shores of Kyushu to defend the southern islands from invasion?

These are things I wonder about.

I have no moral objection to "targeting" the civilians with psy-ops. If you can help them decide to give up, so much the better.

Oh, and I agree with you that in the case of abortion, killing the innocent party is always directly intended. It is the end in itself. If the pregnancy is terminated but the baby comes out alive, that isn't considered a lucky break; it's the most dreaded complication.

Obama even agrees that a right to abortion means a right not tjust to a terminated pregnancy, but also to a dead baby.

If the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and, by some crazy fluke, most of the military supply and logistics sites and arms factories were destroyed, but almost nobody else died, that ewouldn't have been considered a lucky break. No American military leader would have said, "Oh, thank God, we obliterated the army depot and the residential areas were miraculously shielded." On the contrary, it would have been considered weirdly unsuccessful. That's because utterly indiscriminate destruction wiping out the city together with its inhabitants, was the point. What do you think?

Obama even agrees that a right to abortion means a right not tjust to a terminated pregnancy, but also to a dead baby.

If the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and, by some crazy fluke, most of the military supply and logistics sites and arms factories were destroyed, but almost nobody else died, that wouldn't have been considered a lucky break. Truman would not have said, "Oh, thank God, we obliterated the army depot and the port facilities, and the residential areas were miraculously shielded." On the contrary, it would have been considered weirdly unsuccessful. That's because utterly indiscriminate destruction wiping out the city together with its inhabitants, was the point.