Some statements from the major decision-makers suggest that their intention was not to destroy particular strategic military assets in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was to break Japan on the psychological level, through horror. And I think one can know this by looking at the weapons they chose (inherently, intentionally, indiscriminately destructive in theory and in practice) and seeing where they chose to use them. If they had used them on Kyushu, they might have killed 2 million Japanese troops instead of 200,000 Japanese civilians, but it would have been justifiable. But they chose to incinerate civilians instead, to maximize the psychological impact.
I further think that the frank consequentialism of the "target = city" bombings --- the underlying belief that innocent human lives can be targeted and directly intentionally killed, "if it works" --- helped build our abortion regime.
Our abortion culture did not come from the demands of oops-I'm-pregnant 20 year old Starbucks baristas. It came from the demand of a very highly motivated, very small Malthusian-eugenic elite who want a no-limits ethic and total control.
Anything -- they would say --- can be justified "if it works", if it achieves good consequences. That is their intention: to avoid the miseries of random human breeding, "overpopulation" and so forth, and achieve a controlled utopian society, where no one draws breath except the planned, the perfect and the privileged. They haven't achieved that yet, of course: but they certainly have good intentions by the ton.
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