(edited to remove the part about miscarriages since I see you put in the appendix a section on “spontaneous abortion”)
I’d like to point out that there is strong evidence that women who don’t get access to “safe” abortion will give themselves “unsafe” abortions, leading to a higher potential for their own premature death or health complications, as well as the death of the fetus. Roughly half of induced abortions are considered to be “unsafe” due to lack of access to “safe” abortions in developing countries. There is a lot of research that supports this, I can provide more if necessary but I think the WHO information sheet does a decent job of summarizing it.
From the WHO information sheet linked above:
Where abortions are highly restricted, abortions are usually unsafe and carry high risk, especially among poor women; causing serious consequences for the women and a major financial and service burden on the families and on national health systems
Sorry if this a dumb question, but there are so many comments (and I’m on my phone) that I got confused: you, Lauren, removed your remark regarding spontaneous abortions, because they were met by the appendix.
However, while Ariel does “bite the bullet” of Ord’s Scourge paper, I don’t see it making any difference. I’d expect that interventions on reducing miscarriages to be probably more tractable and scalable, and way less costly—so more effective than reducing intentional abortions. We don’t have to save all of the 200m embryos; just like there’s no way of saving all those lost in voluntary abortions.
So, Ariel, the disclaimer that the research only focuses on voluntary abortion reduction sounds ad hoc; as if AMF said they were only focuses on saving lives through bednets, which is not accurate: instead, they think that such projects are the best way, for them, to save lives.
Or perhaps there’s a way to rephrase and clarify the disclaimer to account for this; e g., you’re less concerned about abortion as a cause area and more about a moral constraint regarding projects—i.e., just like we shouldn’t fund projects leading to work abuse, we shouldn’t fund projects leading to abortion. Sometimes, I think that’s your point.
Or is there a particular moral difference between preventing a (statistically predictable) spontaneous abortion and preventing an intentional one, per se?
Second, if we bite that bullet, and actually you see abortion reduction as a cause area, there’s another Scourge unmet by the appendix: discarded frozen embryos. It would be even easier to proscribe that, or (if you think that discarding per se is the issue, instead of just keeping them) to demand they are keeping frozen indeterminately. What do you think about it, Ariel?
Please, sorry if I’m missing something here
I’d expect that interventions on reducing miscarriages to be probably more tractable and scalable, and way less costly—so more effective than reducing intentional abortions.
That may well be true. I’ll confess on being quite ignorant on the subject. Jeff Kaufman gave a great laundry list of interventions in that regard, and I think analyzing their effectiveness is worth taking a poke at.
perhaps there’s a way to rephrase and clarify the disclaimer to account for this; e g., you’re less concerned about abortion as a cause area and more about a moral constraint regarding projects—i.e., just like we shouldn’t fund projects leading to work abuse, we shouldn’t fund projects leading to abortion
This is a very fair point. There’s been a bunch of very understandable discussion of how I shoehorn certain interventions to fit a very tight mold—“voluntary abortion reduction”—when there are either broader/less divisive lessons to take from this, and/or the lesson isn’t even wide enough. In retrospect, there was much I could have arranged/emphasized differently in this post. My reply to Julia’s similar concern here is the best clarification I’ve been able to give on what I was actually trying to say.
is there a particular moral difference between preventing a (statistically predictable) spontaneous abortion and preventing an intentional one, per se?
If in both cases, the outcome is one more child being born and living a happy life than otherwise, then I don’t see a moral difference.
there’s another Scourge unmet by the appendix: discarded frozen embryos
There it is! I actually think this is a pretty compelling pro-embryo-abortion objection in the deontological case. However, in my personal opinion, abortion is morally wrong specifically because it prevents a child from being born and living a happy life. If we had some process through which we could thaw out frozen embryos, place them in artificial wombs, and give them happy lives, then I would agree that destroying a frozen embryo when the counterfactual is putting them through this process and having one more happy person would be morally wrong. However, we seem to be well off from doing that. To needlessly speculate, I think it’s much more likely aligned AGI teaches us to simulate arbitrarily happy people before we ever get to that point. In that case, I would even argue that diverting computational power from the AGI such that it loses the ability to simulate one person would be morally wrong the same way. I basically see all of these cases as just other ways to add (or not add) one more happy person.
Hi Ramiro, I removed my comment because I claimed that Ariel didn’t even mention miscarriages (which I later realized they did).
I do wonder what Ariel’s reply to this comment of yours would be though:
“Or is there a particular moral difference between preventing a (statistically predictable) spontaneous abortion and preventing an intentional one, per se?”
Hi Lauren, thanks for your clarification! Here are a few considerations which might affect the applicability of the point you brought up:
Calum Miller argues that the impact of contraceptive access on abortion rates is more unclear than typically claimed. I haven’t looked enough into his sources to endorse his claim, but you might find it of interest.
Although it’s deeply unfortunate that “unsafe” abortions have worse health outcomes for women, the health outcome for future children is the same either way. It seems to me that in absolute scale, the moral difference between “safe” and “unsafe” abortions is dominated by other factors. As a result, I don’t think the difference between “safe” and “unsafe” abortions is sufficient in and of itself to invalidate the argument (which I lay out in further detail here) for suspending support for charities which decrease the amount of near-term future people.
I don’t think there is strong evidence that legalisation of abortion reduces overall maternal deaths from abortion mortality or morbidity—in some cases, it can even increase it (as it has done in e.g. Netherlands, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and some others). Morbidity and mortality from unsafe abortion are mostly related to the overall state of a healthcare system rather than the legal status of abortion—e.g. Malta and Poland have pretty much entirely anti-abortion laws but have the lowest maternal mortality ratios in the world and deaths from unsafe abortion are unheard of. By contrast India, Ghana, Zambia, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and a host of other countries have liberal laws but have plenty of unsafe abortion and resultant morbidity/mortality.
We do know that the WHO misrepresent the data on this, too—e.g. here https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/abortion they claim that 4.7-13.2% of maternal deaths are due to abortion—but their reference clearly states that this includes deaths from miscarriage and ectopic pregnancies. They have been corrected about this but refuse to change it—so I don’t consider them the most trustworthy authorities on this question.
Sorry, I should have emphasized that it’s not so much about laws, but access to safe abortions, which the charities mentioned in the original post would help with. I appreciate you pointing out issues with the WHO though, I didn’t know that.
Thanks, I clarified in another comment to my own comment, that your suggestion that “we should suspend our support for charities which decrease the amount of near-term future people” seems to suggest otherwise? Or am I misunderstanding something?
(edited to remove the part about miscarriages since I see you put in the appendix a section on “spontaneous abortion”)
I’d like to point out that there is strong evidence that women who don’t get access to “safe” abortion will give themselves “unsafe” abortions, leading to a higher potential for their own premature death or health complications, as well as the death of the fetus. Roughly half of induced abortions are considered to be “unsafe” due to lack of access to “safe” abortions in developing countries. There is a lot of research that supports this, I can provide more if necessary but I think the WHO information sheet does a decent job of summarizing it.
From the WHO information sheet linked above:
Sorry if this a dumb question, but there are so many comments (and I’m on my phone) that I got confused: you, Lauren, removed your remark regarding spontaneous abortions, because they were met by the appendix. However, while Ariel does “bite the bullet” of Ord’s Scourge paper, I don’t see it making any difference. I’d expect that interventions on reducing miscarriages to be probably more tractable and scalable, and way less costly—so more effective than reducing intentional abortions. We don’t have to save all of the 200m embryos; just like there’s no way of saving all those lost in voluntary abortions. So, Ariel, the disclaimer that the research only focuses on voluntary abortion reduction sounds ad hoc; as if AMF said they were only focuses on saving lives through bednets, which is not accurate: instead, they think that such projects are the best way, for them, to save lives. Or perhaps there’s a way to rephrase and clarify the disclaimer to account for this; e g., you’re less concerned about abortion as a cause area and more about a moral constraint regarding projects—i.e., just like we shouldn’t fund projects leading to work abuse, we shouldn’t fund projects leading to abortion. Sometimes, I think that’s your point. Or is there a particular moral difference between preventing a (statistically predictable) spontaneous abortion and preventing an intentional one, per se?
Second, if we bite that bullet, and actually you see abortion reduction as a cause area, there’s another Scourge unmet by the appendix: discarded frozen embryos. It would be even easier to proscribe that, or (if you think that discarding per se is the issue, instead of just keeping them) to demand they are keeping frozen indeterminately. What do you think about it, Ariel? Please, sorry if I’m missing something here
Thanks for your questions, Ramiro!
That may well be true. I’ll confess on being quite ignorant on the subject. Jeff Kaufman gave a great laundry list of interventions in that regard, and I think analyzing their effectiveness is worth taking a poke at.
This is a very fair point. There’s been a bunch of very understandable discussion of how I shoehorn certain interventions to fit a very tight mold—“voluntary abortion reduction”—when there are either broader/less divisive lessons to take from this, and/or the lesson isn’t even wide enough. In retrospect, there was much I could have arranged/emphasized differently in this post. My reply to Julia’s similar concern here is the best clarification I’ve been able to give on what I was actually trying to say.
If in both cases, the outcome is one more child being born and living a happy life than otherwise, then I don’t see a moral difference.
There it is! I actually think this is a pretty compelling pro-embryo-abortion objection in the deontological case. However, in my personal opinion, abortion is morally wrong specifically because it prevents a child from being born and living a happy life. If we had some process through which we could thaw out frozen embryos, place them in artificial wombs, and give them happy lives, then I would agree that destroying a frozen embryo when the counterfactual is putting them through this process and having one more happy person would be morally wrong. However, we seem to be well off from doing that. To needlessly speculate, I think it’s much more likely aligned AGI teaches us to simulate arbitrarily happy people before we ever get to that point. In that case, I would even argue that diverting computational power from the AGI such that it loses the ability to simulate one person would be morally wrong the same way. I basically see all of these cases as just other ways to add (or not add) one more happy person.
Hi Ramiro, I removed my comment because I claimed that Ariel didn’t even mention miscarriages (which I later realized they did).
I do wonder what Ariel’s reply to this comment of yours would be though:
“Or is there a particular moral difference between preventing a (statistically predictable) spontaneous abortion and preventing an intentional one, per se?”
I replied to Ramiro here if you’d like to read the elaboration, but my answer is no :)
To be clear, this is in response to your conclusion:
Which I disagree with, for the reason I listed above.
Hi Lauren, thanks for your clarification! Here are a few considerations which might affect the applicability of the point you brought up:
Calum Miller argues that the impact of contraceptive access on abortion rates is more unclear than typically claimed. I haven’t looked enough into his sources to endorse his claim, but you might find it of interest.
Although it’s deeply unfortunate that “unsafe” abortions have worse health outcomes for women, the health outcome for future children is the same either way. It seems to me that in absolute scale, the moral difference between “safe” and “unsafe” abortions is dominated by other factors. As a result, I don’t think the difference between “safe” and “unsafe” abortions is sufficient in and of itself to invalidate the argument (which I lay out in further detail here) for suspending support for charities which decrease the amount of near-term future people.
I don’t think there is strong evidence that legalisation of abortion reduces overall maternal deaths from abortion mortality or morbidity—in some cases, it can even increase it (as it has done in e.g. Netherlands, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and some others). Morbidity and mortality from unsafe abortion are mostly related to the overall state of a healthcare system rather than the legal status of abortion—e.g. Malta and Poland have pretty much entirely anti-abortion laws but have the lowest maternal mortality ratios in the world and deaths from unsafe abortion are unheard of. By contrast India, Ghana, Zambia, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and a host of other countries have liberal laws but have plenty of unsafe abortion and resultant morbidity/mortality.
We do know that the WHO misrepresent the data on this, too—e.g. here https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/abortion they claim that 4.7-13.2% of maternal deaths are due to abortion—but their reference clearly states that this includes deaths from miscarriage and ectopic pregnancies. They have been corrected about this but refuse to change it—so I don’t consider them the most trustworthy authorities on this question.
Sorry, I should have emphasized that it’s not so much about laws, but access to safe abortions, which the charities mentioned in the original post would help with. I appreciate you pointing out issues with the WHO though, I didn’t know that.
Thanks, I clarified in another comment to my own comment, that your suggestion that “we should suspend our support for charities which decrease the amount of near-term future people” seems to suggest otherwise? Or am I misunderstanding something?