Why do you believe that donating to lifesaving charities is in tension with donating to family planning charities? Preventing early deaths from disease reduces suffering, as does allowing women greater bodily autonomy and preventing unwanted pregnancies.
Thanks for the question! Earlier, Vasco gave a consequentialist response, but I’ll try to give a broader response which might chime for more ethical views.
For you, where does the goodness of a lifesaving charity come from? Saving someone’s life:
Enables them to realize the experience of the rest of their life.
Satisfies their desire to survive and not die.
Alleviates the suffering that would have accompanied their death.
These might all seem like noncontroversial benefits, but how one weights between them can have massive implications for cause prioritization. Many EAs consider point (1) to be the main benefit of saving one’s life. Whether or not you’re a consequentialist, if you had to choose between saving a 10-year-old and a 90-year-old, it seems sensible to choose the 10-year-old, because they have so much more life to experience.
But if point (1) is the main benefit of saving a life, even if points (2) and (3) are sizeable parts of the benefit, adding a person to the human population seems close to as good as saving a life! You’re enabling another person to live an entire life’s experience.
However, this bumps against the intuition of the goodness of family planning charities. Preventing an unplanned pregnancy absolutely helps a mother, but it’s probably not close to as good as saving her life. (Just ask her if she’d rather die or have an unplanned pregnancy. Most would choose the latter.) But we just argued that the effect of preventing another person from living an entire life’s experience is close to as bad as preventing a life from being saved.
You can also make this argument in the opposite direction: If family planning charities are good, then this must mean it’s okay to prevent a person from living a life’s experience, or it’s at least not as bad as the goodness of supporting their mother’s autonomy. This would mean lifesaving charities are much less beneficial than we thought they were.
Thank you for this thorough explanation of your views. I am quite curious as to whether you have ever been pregnant. Of course, many people who have been pregnant are vehemently anti-abortion, but my own personal experience of (wanted) pregnancy made me convinced that forcing someone to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is a crime against their humanity.[1] If you can’t understand why this might be, I would suggest reading Judith Jarvis Thompson’s violinist paper.
I don’t want to relitigate whether abortion ought to be legal (or encouraged, or funded, or whatever), as I find the fact that my bodily autonomy is up for debate to be somewhat dispiriting, so I am going to bow out of this conversation now, but once again I appreciate your taking the time to explain your viewpoint.
‘but what of the fetus’s humanity?’ idk man, the fetus is a possible human and the mother is an actual human, and I think actual humans are more important than possible ones. This is also why I’m not a longtermist.
You’re very welcome! I appreciate you reading and engaging :)
I’m a male and have not been pregnant. I’m familiar with Thompson’s arguments, and I don’t consider them decisive. Depending upon the weeks from gestation, the fetus may be a possible person, but they may also be an actual person.[1] Either way, as in longtermism, I don’t endorse a moral distinction between possible and actual people.
I respect your decision to bow out, so I won’t elaborate on these points unless you request me to. Thanks again for your engagement!
“Overall, the evidence, and a balanced reading of that evidence, points towards an immediate and unreflective pain experience mediated by the developing function of the nervous system from as early as 12 weeks.” Derbyshire, S. W., & Bockmann, J. C. (2020). Reconsidering fetal pain. Journal of Medical Ethics, 46(1), 3–6. https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2019-105701
Thanks for asking! On the one hand, there is not a tension in the sense that both interventions are decreasing suffering in the short term. On the other hand:
Assuming:
The major driver of the (positive/negative) impact of lifesaving and family planning charities is essentially a function of their effect on population size.
Lifesaving charities increase population size, whereas family planning charities decrease it.
There is a tension. If increasing the population size is good (bad), lifesaving charities are good (bad), but family planning charities are bad (good).
Thanks for the explanation! I’m not a consequentialist, and I don’t grant that increasing the population size is good in its own right. If you accept increased population as an intrinsic good I can see why you’d see a tension.
Just to clarify, I do not see increasing human population as intrinsically good. I think it increases the welfare of humans in the nearterm (assuming the saved lives are good in expectation), but I am quite uncertain about the effects on animals, and indirect longterm effects. So I do not know whether increasing population is good or bad.
Why do you believe that donating to lifesaving charities is in tension with donating to family planning charities? Preventing early deaths from disease reduces suffering, as does allowing women greater bodily autonomy and preventing unwanted pregnancies.
Thanks for the question! Earlier, Vasco gave a consequentialist response, but I’ll try to give a broader response which might chime for more ethical views.
For you, where does the goodness of a lifesaving charity come from? Saving someone’s life:
Enables them to realize the experience of the rest of their life.
Satisfies their desire to survive and not die.
Alleviates the suffering that would have accompanied their death.
These might all seem like noncontroversial benefits, but how one weights between them can have massive implications for cause prioritization. Many EAs consider point (1) to be the main benefit of saving one’s life. Whether or not you’re a consequentialist, if you had to choose between saving a 10-year-old and a 90-year-old, it seems sensible to choose the 10-year-old, because they have so much more life to experience.
But if point (1) is the main benefit of saving a life, even if points (2) and (3) are sizeable parts of the benefit, adding a person to the human population seems close to as good as saving a life! You’re enabling another person to live an entire life’s experience.
However, this bumps against the intuition of the goodness of family planning charities. Preventing an unplanned pregnancy absolutely helps a mother, but it’s probably not close to as good as saving her life. (Just ask her if she’d rather die or have an unplanned pregnancy. Most would choose the latter.) But we just argued that the effect of preventing another person from living an entire life’s experience is close to as bad as preventing a life from being saved.
You can also make this argument in the opposite direction: If family planning charities are good, then this must mean it’s okay to prevent a person from living a life’s experience, or it’s at least not as bad as the goodness of supporting their mother’s autonomy. This would mean lifesaving charities are much less beneficial than we thought they were.
(Full disclosure: I take the first perspective, and don’t support family planning charities.)
Thank you for this thorough explanation of your views. I am quite curious as to whether you have ever been pregnant. Of course, many people who have been pregnant are vehemently anti-abortion, but my own personal experience of (wanted) pregnancy made me convinced that forcing someone to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is a crime against their humanity.[1] If you can’t understand why this might be, I would suggest reading Judith Jarvis Thompson’s violinist paper.
I don’t want to relitigate whether abortion ought to be legal (or encouraged, or funded, or whatever), as I find the fact that my bodily autonomy is up for debate to be somewhat dispiriting, so I am going to bow out of this conversation now, but once again I appreciate your taking the time to explain your viewpoint.
‘but what of the fetus’s humanity?’ idk man, the fetus is a possible human and the mother is an actual human, and I think actual humans are more important than possible ones. This is also why I’m not a longtermist.
You’re very welcome! I appreciate you reading and engaging :)
I’m a male and have not been pregnant. I’m familiar with Thompson’s arguments, and I don’t consider them decisive. Depending upon the weeks from gestation, the fetus may be a possible person, but they may also be an actual person.[1] Either way, as in longtermism, I don’t endorse a moral distinction between possible and actual people.
I respect your decision to bow out, so I won’t elaborate on these points unless you request me to. Thanks again for your engagement!
“Overall, the evidence, and a balanced reading of that evidence, points towards an immediate and unreflective pain experience mediated by the developing function of the nervous system from as early as 12 weeks.” Derbyshire, S. W., & Bockmann, J. C. (2020). Reconsidering fetal pain. Journal of Medical Ethics, 46(1), 3–6. https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2019-105701
Hi britomart,
Thanks for asking! On the one hand, there is not a tension in the sense that both interventions are decreasing suffering in the short term. On the other hand:
Assuming:
The major driver of the (positive/negative) impact of lifesaving and family planning charities is essentially a function of their effect on population size.
Lifesaving charities increase population size, whereas family planning charities decrease it.
There is a tension. If increasing the population size is good (bad), lifesaving charities are good (bad), but family planning charities are bad (good).
Thanks for the explanation! I’m not a consequentialist, and I don’t grant that increasing the population size is good in its own right. If you accept increased population as an intrinsic good I can see why you’d see a tension.
You are welcome!
Just to clarify, I do not see increasing human population as intrinsically good. I think it increases the welfare of humans in the nearterm (assuming the saved lives are good in expectation), but I am quite uncertain about the effects on animals, and indirect longterm effects. So I do not know whether increasing population is good or bad.