I should have elaborated more upon why abortion’s scale implies that those who have intervened to reduce it thus far aren’t going about it very effectively, but I’ll let Toby Ord do it instead:
Cancer, in all its forms, kills 7.6 million per year, while spontaneous abortion kills 30 times this number (World Health Organization 2005). In 6 years, the Second World War killed approximately 60 million people, whereas spontaneous abortion kills more than 3 times this number every year. For supporters of the Claim there is little choice but to see it as one of the world’s greatest problems, if not the greatest problem.
The introduction to the Scourge ended with a practical conclusion:
> There was an overwhelming obligation on society to fight it. Other projects had to be put on hold and a major international effort dedicated to loosening the Scourge’s grip on humanity.
For supporters of the Claim, it is difficult to resist a similar conclusion. Finding a means of saving even 5% of embryos from spontaneous abortion would save more lives than a cure for cancer. If we see one of these as requiring an immense international collaboration, then why not the other?
Toby’s argument is about spontaneous abortion’s neglectedness, not induced abortion, but it’s easy to divide the number by 3 (200 million → 73 million) and draw the same conclusion.
I don’t have strong disagreements with your policy prescriptions on adoption. Though you’ve retracted the crazytown comment, I’d also like to note that if (hypothetically) people who donated kidneys took 9 months to regenerate a new donateable kidney, then we’d see posts on the EA forum about how EAs should consider donating a kidney every year or so, and I’d largely agree with those posts.
On voluntary abortion reduction’s tractability, I think it’s worth pointing out that other problems of moral circle expansion including slavery, women’s rights, and hopefully animal welfare all began with voluntarily convincing people to do what was right, even in a time when few agreed. 150 years ago, slavery was widely practiced by many “civilized” countries. I don’t think it’s impossible that in 150 years, abortion will be widely regarded as the worst moral catastrophe in history between human beings. If that day ever comes, it’ll because people were convinced to take a stand, one person at a time.
Again, I really don’t think you can draw conclusions about “effectiveness,” at least as defined as “seizing the lowest-hanging fruit,” by articulating the scale of the problem.
But one other way you might find leverage is by moving the medical ethics community to include miscarriages in mortality statistics. 50% of miscarriages are due to chromosomal abnormalities and occur during the first few months of pregnancy.
Right now, we have all kinds of med ethics concerns around the idea that it’s somehow unethical to give an “advantage” by genetic modification or selection of embryos. But if we viewed that embryo as a person, or a medical patient, it is consensus unethical to make medical decisions on behalf of the welfare of anyone except that patient. So you can then only consider the health of the embryo. As a happy consequence, you not only get moral grounds for embryo engineering for health, you also (from a population growth and maternal health perspective) get ~75% fewer miscarriages if this became a common practice.
Thanks for your reply!
I should have elaborated more upon why abortion’s scale implies that those who have intervened to reduce it thus far aren’t going about it very effectively, but I’ll let Toby Ord do it instead:
Toby’s argument is about spontaneous abortion’s neglectedness, not induced abortion, but it’s easy to divide the number by 3 (200 million → 73 million) and draw the same conclusion.
I don’t have strong disagreements with your policy prescriptions on adoption. Though you’ve retracted the crazytown comment, I’d also like to note that if (hypothetically) people who donated kidneys took 9 months to regenerate a new donateable kidney, then we’d see posts on the EA forum about how EAs should consider donating a kidney every year or so, and I’d largely agree with those posts.
On voluntary abortion reduction’s tractability, I think it’s worth pointing out that other problems of moral circle expansion including slavery, women’s rights, and hopefully animal welfare all began with voluntarily convincing people to do what was right, even in a time when few agreed. 150 years ago, slavery was widely practiced by many “civilized” countries. I don’t think it’s impossible that in 150 years, abortion will be widely regarded as the worst moral catastrophe in history between human beings. If that day ever comes, it’ll because people were convinced to take a stand, one person at a time.
Again, I really don’t think you can draw conclusions about “effectiveness,” at least as defined as “seizing the lowest-hanging fruit,” by articulating the scale of the problem.
But one other way you might find leverage is by moving the medical ethics community to include miscarriages in mortality statistics. 50% of miscarriages are due to chromosomal abnormalities and occur during the first few months of pregnancy.
Right now, we have all kinds of med ethics concerns around the idea that it’s somehow unethical to give an “advantage” by genetic modification or selection of embryos. But if we viewed that embryo as a person, or a medical patient, it is consensus unethical to make medical decisions on behalf of the welfare of anyone except that patient. So you can then only consider the health of the embryo. As a happy consequence, you not only get moral grounds for embryo engineering for health, you also (from a population growth and maternal health perspective) get ~75% fewer miscarriages if this became a common practice.