That seems like an abstract point, but maybe... "I had gotten the impression that Germania wasn't so secure as to be able to safely eschew conscription?  So Theologian Agnew's point is probably academic?"

"If public torture is needed to maintain public order because - what, the people would revolt without the threat? - that paints a very unflattering picture of Taldor! On Earth everyone would conclude that such a state is an oppressive tyranny ruling against the wishes and to the great detriment of the population, and expect it to stage a revolution at the first opportunity."

It might seem to make sense to sacrifice some of your human resources if that motivates the others sufficiently, if they work harder and are more loyal because they're afraid of being purged, but humans don't actually respond well to threats and uncertainty. The communists don't have constant internal revolts, but they also don't have productivity nearly as high as nations that place people in a system they are happy to be part of with positive reinforcement and incentives. 

"Germania does practice conscription, because unfortunately no matter how wealthy you are your army has to compete against equally wealthy nations and bigger armies tend to win, all else being equal. At least, until technology is so advanced that most people either can't be trained to use it or are genuinely unnecessary on the battlefield. In peacetime most men were conscripted for a brief duration to prepare them for later reserve service; in wartime conscription quickly became universal, or rather, the army decided who not to enlist because their civilian jobs were more important to the war economy, in a sense conscrpting them into those jobs."

"I wasn't setting conscription policy or rounding up recruits, obviously, but I was in command of mostly conscripted soldiers. Some might have volunteered otherwise, but I'm sure many of them did not start out wanting to be there," because Tanya expects better than that from her men; most of them became crazy battle maniacs during their service but that's just following incentives and the known psychological effects of wartime service in an elite unit.

"....I volunteered for service myself, because I would have been conscripted as a mage once I came of age and I saw no profit in waiting. It was still peacetime then." Tanya was still foolish enough to hope the peace would last, that everyone's rational incentives would win out against Being X's thumb on the scale and whatever it is that makes men wage ruinous war even in the absence of Beings.

"Taldor is indeed not the best managed state, and even at it's height before Aroden's death its politics were fractious and counterproductive.  I think you've described reasonable conditions for conscription to exist under, so I'll move on."

He is starting to get more of a picture of Von Degurechaff.

"...you mentioned you were a man in your first life, were you married or did you otherwise have a romantic partner or partners?"

He'll skip a few if she was not.  She (he?) may have a life and a half of experience, but they still look like a young girl.

That one is at least straightforward: every human society has rape and every society must see it as a problem (and so Tanya has naturally not committed it). ...although Being X also thought not procreating was a sin, so maybe she shouldn't assume? This takes her back to her first life, with different cultural norms from Germania that she has no idea how the locals will judge, but she can still answer promptly.

"I was never married and didn't have serious romantic relationships, or children. I patronized sex workers several times, including in a work-adjacent context... ah, that is, with a group of coworkers in after-hours social events."

Well, so much for more prosperous societies being all around better.  Maybe they do get kind of decadent along some lines, that is the clearest objection to the Arodenite belief he knows of.  Although one particularly sort of decadency actually works favor of not being Evil.

"So one source of potential Evil and also Lawlessness, is, uh, leaving a woman with child and not supporting her.  Um... uh... were you doing the sorts of ahem, acts, that aren't at risk of causing pregnancy?  That would mitigate this concern."

This subject continues to be awkward to talk about with someone that looks like a young girl.

"We made use of contraceptives, which on that world are cheap, safe and very effective. There are also cheap, safe and legal abortifacients in case of need. I suppose it would be... technically possible for a woman to deliberately become pregnant and then not tell me about it, but I can't think of why anyone would do that" at all or with her in particular "and I was certainly not informed of any such case nor asked for child support." Legally she wouldn't have been obligated to provide child support anyway, because of the abovementioned birth control, but that's not really relevant.

(Tanya has waded through oceans of blood and mud. She has seen bodies dismembered by canonfire a hundred at a time, passed by allies fighting desperately for their lives when her mission parameters forbade diversions, administered far greater bodily harm to countless people than making them pregnant. No matter how strongly the social script insists that talking about sex should be awkward, and pace the nuns who raised her, some tasks are above her ability to convincingly act out.)

"Abortion past a certain point sends the soul to Pharasma's boneyard, with all the problems for the child's soul I previously mentioned."

He thinks a moment...

"If you really had no reliable knowledge of afterlives or souls I think that is a strongly mitigating factor?  And preventing pregnancy in the first place should be fine, its probably the responsible and Good action to take if you aren't prepared to support a child."

She's really interested in the theological and ethical implications of safe, cheap, and effective contraceptives but she doesn't really have the time (or nerve, she's blushing at this conversation).

"For humans it is towards the end of six weeks a typical pregnancy is ensouled, but crossbreeding with other species, like orcs, can make it slightly sooner, and it is speculated even traces of nonhuman descent might make it sooner, so the recommended latest morally safe date is four and a half weeks, assuming accurate knowledge of when the impregnation occurred."

She wonders if Pharasma set it up that way on purpose, or at least could fix it if she cared to.  Pharasma really is quite obviously terrible in multiple ways once you consider things carefully.

He raises an eyebrow at Agnew.  You could just not have sex when you aren't planning on having children in the first place.

There is rape.  There is rape with Lamashtu monsters or cultist known to be involved!  You really don't want to let a pregnancy influenced by Lamashtu come to term, and you can avoid the entire moral dilemma if you can learn about it soon enough!

"There were many competing claims about the afterlives but no basis for a justified belief and accordingly few people believed, at least in the society I grew up in. ...I am not at all an expert and I'm not sure if women can tell they're pregnant within six weeks if they're not doing medical checks for it. If the contraceptives failed somehow the abortion would probably be done later than that. Which would be perceived only as an inconvenience, and birth control correctly used is really meant to be very reliable (*). 'Not prepared to support a child' isn't an appropriate gloss; the clear intention on both sides was not to have a child, one way or another."

What is Pharasma doing with six week old fetus souls is she sending them to be tortured not relevant.

At least the Christians think fetus souls probably go to Heaven also not relevant. She needs to stay focused.

(*) Tanya is tragically wrong about this.