[JohnGalt]

Apologies I forgot that I had not used the abortion example with you on an earlier exchange.

I am not sure what your stance on the "supreme evil" of our day abortion is, but I used the example of 20,000,000 women walking around who contracted to murder their own babies. Our society has long thought murderers should be punished so I was asking whether the cost (financial, cultural...) of putting 20,000,000 women in prison is worth it.

[Restorer]

Do I think that all women who have had abortions should be punished in some way? No, although I have no particularly logical reason why I feel this way.

Certainly it is utterly impractical from a political standpoint, since by the time you add up the family and friends of these 20,000,000 women you have a large majority of voters who would oppose sending these women up the river. Not to mention that the Constitution does not permit the punishment of people for things that were legal when they did them.

You apparently believe that the freeing of 4,000,000 people not from metaphorical slavery, but rather from literal slavery, was not worth 600,000 American lives. I disagree.

If America truly believes in freedom, the presence of slavery amongst us was an insult worth almost any cost to remove. If we don't believe in freedom, our talking about it constantly and patting ourselves on the back for being free is nothing but despicable hypocrisy.

BTW, it is a tad disingenuous to use 600,000 lives as the cost of getting rid of slavery. A little under half of those lives were lost in its defense. If I remember correctly, 380,000 died for the Union. That was the cost of freeing the slaves.

220,000 died in a failed attempt to preserve the institution.