On “especially,” yep, that was an incorrect use of words, and I’ve edited my comment accordingly. Thanks for pointing that out!
Based on your considerations, and after thinking about it some more, I retract the “obligation” point, and now agree that the fact that we’re not “obligated” to fund this cause doesn’t make the downstream effects of the funding redirection “voluntary” or “involuntary” for the recipients.
it might be true that recipients can procure the services in other ways, but I’d like to see this claim actually justified for the charities that you are suggesting should have their funding suspended
Of the charities I mentioned, to the best of my knowledge, only PSI actually provides abortions. DMI and FEM run media campaigns encouraging contraception. MHI connects women with contraception access. On DMI, FEM, and MHI, Calum suggests that the unmet need for contraception due to lack of access is quite low, and supports his suggestion pretty well IMO.
I think PSI is where your point is strongest, since it seems very difficult to rule out the possibility that there exists some place where PSI is the only abortion provider. However, PSI is not an EA charity, and it seems very unlikely that removing its recommendation from The Life You Can Save’s website would cause it to stop being able to offer its services where there’s the greatest unredirectable demand.
As for whether or not the intervention’s harm is worth the benefits it brings, I’d like to point out that this concern is orthogonal to the question of whether or not the intervention could be considered “voluntary.” That said, I would say yes, and that’s the reasoning I use to recommend it.
[homelessness analogy]...the definitions you use are misleading and contrary to my best guess to what most people would interpret as “voluntary abortion reduction”
Your homelessness analogy is a good one, and it does accurately show how my use of the term “voluntary” could have been misleading. I have some regrets about the whole structure of my post in that regard. I reply to Julia Wise’s similar concern here, which might help explain much more about my thought process.
(btw the disagree votes aren’t coming from me)
No worries! I used to go on Reddit often, and as you can imagine from our interactions, I was prone to getting heavily downvoted :P To avoid motivated/emotion-driven “reasoning”, I made a personal rule to never downvote anyone on Reddit for any reason. I’m off Reddit now, but I’ve always maintained the rule that I never downvote respectful discourse. I think engagement is better than a disagree-vote, and strive to avoid the latter in favor of the former.
To close (as frankly, there’s only so much brainpower I’m willing to extend on this semantic consideration), I maintain that the interventions I suggest would be the right thing to do. However, there’s a sensible case that there are reasonable definitions of “voluntary” which readers understandably presuppose when reading the post for which the interventions don’t qualify. Though I maintain that there are senses in which they do qualify, I think you’ve made an excellent case that there’s substantial ambiguity there which can blindside readers. I’d appreciate if you read my reply to Julia Wise’s similar concern (which helps to spell my actual intention behind the post), and let me know what you think would be the best way to disambiguate while staying true to the post’s scope.
Thanks! Happy to see real-time updates on the internet.
I did see Calum’s papers—I didn’t reply because I didn’t have time to meaningfully engage with all those sources, and it looked like others replied first. There were some info that surprised me, but on a very brief skim, I don’t know if those sources actually bring me to the conclusion of:
Moreover, the unmet need for contraception in developing countries is also pretty low, and the proportion of this which is due to lack of access is very small—so the number of women not using contraception because they lack access to it is pretty miniscule.
RE: harm vs benefit tradeoff, I agree that this is basically irrelevant in terms of whether this is voluntary or not, though it is relevant in terms of deciding whether or not I should accept the suggestion at face value.
To close (as frankly, there’s only so much brainpower I’m willing to extend on this semantic consideration), I maintain that the interventions I suggest would be the right thing to do.
Makes sense RE: capacity. Yeah, I’m not engaging with whether this is the right thing to do, all things considered—you could make a case for example that money spent on these charities could plausibly be better spent elsewhere, though to be clear, I would personally find it pretty aversive to justify this primarily because we wanted higher rates of unwanted pregnancies to increase population size. I’m mainly suggesting that even if you think this is the right thing to do, it shouldn’t be considered “voluntary abortion reduction” for the reasons I illustrate above.
RE: your response to Julia’s, I’ll add a quick comment in that thread.
On “especially,” yep, that was an incorrect use of words, and I’ve edited my comment accordingly. Thanks for pointing that out!
Based on your considerations, and after thinking about it some more, I retract the “obligation” point, and now agree that the fact that we’re not “obligated” to fund this cause doesn’t make the downstream effects of the funding redirection “voluntary” or “involuntary” for the recipients.
Of the charities I mentioned, to the best of my knowledge, only PSI actually provides abortions. DMI and FEM run media campaigns encouraging contraception. MHI connects women with contraception access. On DMI, FEM, and MHI, Calum suggests that the unmet need for contraception due to lack of access is quite low, and supports his suggestion pretty well IMO.
I think PSI is where your point is strongest, since it seems very difficult to rule out the possibility that there exists some place where PSI is the only abortion provider. However, PSI is not an EA charity, and it seems very unlikely that removing its recommendation from The Life You Can Save’s website would cause it to stop being able to offer its services where there’s the greatest unredirectable demand.
As for whether or not the intervention’s harm is worth the benefits it brings, I’d like to point out that this concern is orthogonal to the question of whether or not the intervention could be considered “voluntary.” That said, I would say yes, and that’s the reasoning I use to recommend it.
Your homelessness analogy is a good one, and it does accurately show how my use of the term “voluntary” could have been misleading. I have some regrets about the whole structure of my post in that regard. I reply to Julia Wise’s similar concern here, which might help explain much more about my thought process.
No worries! I used to go on Reddit often, and as you can imagine from our interactions, I was prone to getting heavily downvoted :P To avoid motivated/emotion-driven “reasoning”, I made a personal rule to never downvote anyone on Reddit for any reason. I’m off Reddit now, but I’ve always maintained the rule that I never downvote respectful discourse. I think engagement is better than a disagree-vote, and strive to avoid the latter in favor of the former.
To close (as frankly, there’s only so much brainpower I’m willing to extend on this semantic consideration), I maintain that the interventions I suggest would be the right thing to do. However, there’s a sensible case that there are reasonable definitions of “voluntary” which readers understandably presuppose when reading the post for which the interventions don’t qualify. Though I maintain that there are senses in which they do qualify, I think you’ve made an excellent case that there’s substantial ambiguity there which can blindside readers. I’d appreciate if you read my reply to Julia Wise’s similar concern (which helps to spell my actual intention behind the post), and let me know what you think would be the best way to disambiguate while staying true to the post’s scope.
Thanks! Happy to see real-time updates on the internet.
I did see Calum’s papers—I didn’t reply because I didn’t have time to meaningfully engage with all those sources, and it looked like others replied first. There were some info that surprised me, but on a very brief skim, I don’t know if those sources actually bring me to the conclusion of:
RE: harm vs benefit tradeoff, I agree that this is basically irrelevant in terms of whether this is voluntary or not, though it is relevant in terms of deciding whether or not I should accept the suggestion at face value.
Makes sense RE: capacity. Yeah, I’m not engaging with whether this is the right thing to do, all things considered—you could make a case for example that money spent on these charities could plausibly be better spent elsewhere, though to be clear, I would personally find it pretty aversive to justify this primarily because we wanted higher rates of unwanted pregnancies to increase population size. I’m mainly suggesting that even if you think this is the right thing to do, it shouldn’t be considered “voluntary abortion reduction” for the reasons I illustrate above.
RE: your response to Julia’s, I’ll add a quick comment in that thread.