Hi, thanks for your thoughtful comment! You bring up some great points which hadnât been raised yet.
This post outlines some suggestions for more encompassing policies, like daycare or family tax credits, but I believe that these policies should not be closely tied to a goal of reducing abortion in order to avoid these perverse incentives and distortion down the line, and that abortion reduction should at best be seen as a tertiary goal or byproduct.
Iâve updated from âneutralâ to âagreeâ with this over the conversation. While reducing abortion has emotional significance for me, it was an awful framing of my postâs policy proposals. I can imagine that even the suggestion of diverting funding from charities which reduce the amount of near-term future people to charities which accomplish similar object-level goals without that externality would have been met far more charitably without the priming on âvoluntary abortion reductionâ as a goal.
I donât think it acts as a replacement to family planning.
Good points here which offer some idiosyncratic benefits of family planning which are difficult to impossible to adequately replace with other interventions.
I personally think that the natural conclusion to this line of argument in the abstract is that longtermists should be anti-abortion, which is something that blurs the line between reduction of âvoluntaryâ abortion and abortion altogether, but I realize that there are different ways to interpret it and donât at all mean to say this is what youâre arguing for.
Yes, this is also the conclusion I reach from the post. Interestingly, it seems that we donât actually disagree on the object-level implications of philosophical views, but just have different philosophical views. For example, it seems that my weighting of longtermism versus the deontological considerations you outlined lean more towards longtermism than your weighting, which explains our object-level disagreement quite well.
Concerns about personal autonomy should not (and do not) preclude interventions providing support to people who need resources to have a safe, healthy and happy pregnancy and recovery, but they do preclude interventions that would make access to contraceptives or abortions harder.
Yep, this is a good argument, and youâve convinced me that my choice of section title âPersonal Autonomy Shouldnât Preclude Interventionâ incorrectly claims that the sectionâs argument shows more than it actually shows. The sectionâs argument only shows that EAs should be sympathetic to the idea that we have a moral duty to exercise our personal autonomy in a particular way, but not that this (in and of itself) justifies the interventions I later argued for.
How about I change the section title to âExercising Personal Autonomy to Help Othersâ?
I can imagine that even the suggestion of diverting funding from charities which reduce the amount of near-term future people to charities which accomplish similar object-level goals without that externality would have been met far more charitably without the priming on âvoluntary abortion reductionâ as a goal.
To be fair, I donât think your post has been met uncharitablyâin fact, Iâd argue that the response has been extremely charitable despite the mismatch between stated goals and policy suggestions.
How about I change the section title to âExercising Personal Autonomy to Help Othersâ?
Iâm honestly quite opposed to the use of personal autonomy in this context. This is very related to the extant debates about abortion and public debates in general, where personal autonomy is broadly framed in terms of rights rather than as a synonym for âchoosing to do somethingâ. Your section starts with âWhen discussing abortion, it is crucial for us to emphasize the importance of personal autonomyâ, and I think that it is at best poorly worded and misleading to use personal autonomy in that way because of the way the term is generally used and understood in public and political debate. The reason personal autonomy is important to discussions about abortion is because there are a lot of external forces, most importantly legal ones, that prevent people from exercising their personal autonomy to get an abortion. The opposite of this isnât true for choosing to have a child. There is an argument to be made that the positive social right to have a child and to have the state subsidize the care of that child in one way or another is not being met and that diminishes the capacity of individuals to have as many children as they want because they donât have the means to care them, and that this is a question of personal autonomy, but I disagree with that argument and find it a stretch at best, and in any case that argument isnât being made. In itâs current form, using personal autonomy in that section reads like either a result of a poor understanding of the role of personal autonomy in debates about abortion or like a semantic maneuver the preemptively undermine objections on the ground of personal autonomy, which is particularly problematic because of suggestions to defund charities and intervention providing family planning and abortion services.
My understanding of your objection is that in the public discussion, personal autonomy is framed as a right, but in my post, itâs framed more as the ability to make choices which affect oneâs personal life. You believe that the latter framing insufficiently addresses the external forces which prevent some from exercising their personal autonomy, which you view as fundamental to the discussion of personal autonomy with respect to abortion. (Please let me know if anything about my characterization of your objection is incorrect, since this is the characterization Iâll be responding to.)
I think there are two reasons why weâre not seeing eye-to-eye on your objection:
Credence in utilitarianism versus deontology:
I hold much higher credence in utilitarianism than deontology, so I normally wouldnât speak of a ârightâ to free speech, or a ârightâ to personal autonomy, etc. Instead, I would frame free speech and personal autonomy as important normsâthe ability to choose what to say and the ability to choose what happens in oneâs personal lifeâwhich are instrumentally useful in realizing the utilitarian goal.
Your higher weighing of deontology seems like a factor in the greater focus you place on rights, which affects the insistence with which you believe external forces should have been addressed in the post.
Scope considerations:
In a post on voluntary hate speech reduction, I could write a section entitled âExercising Free Speech to Help Othersâ where I argue that even though free speech is a very important norm, we shouldnât make the choice to use our free speech to spread hate. Because the postâs scope specifically concerns voluntary interventions, I wouldnât feel it pressing to address external forces which prevent some from exercising their free speech (hate speech laws in Europe, repression in North Korea, etc) as theyâre out of scope.
As for your perspective, Iâm not sure whether your opinion is (a) that this postâs scope should be broader or (b) that even given this postâs stated scope, itâs still worth it to address the external forces you brought up.
Re: your characterization of my argument, framng personally autonomy as a right or an ability is a distinction without much difference here unless you argue that external forces that would change your right to have a child or an abortion doesnât effect your ability to have one, which is obviously untrue. If someone wants to have an abortion where itâs illegal, their ability to get an abortion is seriously constrained. Of someone wants to have a child where having children is illegal, their ability to have a child is seriously constrained as well. Ignoring this is either a myopic oversight or ignorant of the way political, economic, legal and social systems impact peopleâs choices and ability to make choices in the world. This also applies to your point on âCredence in deontology vs. utilitarianismââI donât see how a utilitarian or deontological framework changes this at all.
More importantly, the framing of voluntary abortion reduction means that people should choose to not do a certain thing, not they should or should be able to choose it. This doesnât immediately clash with personal autonomy as either of us have defined it when your proposition is formed as âpeople who want to have children should be able to have themâ, but when you form it as âpeople who are pregnant should have their childrenâ (which seems to me to be the actual argument of the post, based on the post and your comments) it is no longer a question of ability but of choice.
The reason I find the use of personal autonomy in the post objectionable is because using a term that is central to extant debates in a way that is disconnected from and unrelated to its use in those debates implies that it is response to those arguments without actually engaging with them. This was a bigger problem when the title was personal autonomy does not preclude intervention, but i still think the bidyif the section itself reads as disingenuous in a similar way. Debates around personal autonomy in relation to abortion are not about how one should exersize their personal autonomy, they are about whether or not pregnant people should have the right to exercise their personal autonomy. These are two different arguments and the language functions as semantic tool to separate them. Treating them as if they are the same is unproductive and incorrect, so differentiating between them is necessary.
âwhere I argue that even though free speech is a very important norm, we shouldnât make the choice to use our free speech to spread hate.â
I think this comparison fails because, although personal autonomy is a very important norm, the right to personal autonomy if pregnant people is being weakened or completely stripped away in many places in the world. Additionally, you are ostensibly making an argument in favor of personal autonomy (people should be able to have and raise ot adopt children if they want to), not against it (people should not be able to have abortions). This, to me, makes personal autonomy irrelevant to your proposal because you are arguing for a moral prescription because it is a prescription on how one should choose to act not on how they have the ability to act.
âAs for your perspective, Iâm not sure whether your opinion is (a) that this postâs scope should be broader or (b) that even given this postâs stated scope, itâs still worth it to address the external forces you brought up.â
I think that arguing against abortion without bringing up these external forces and the realities of pregnancy is deeply flawed. Although you make a passing concession to the costs of pregnancy in your post, I do think that these costs are severely minimized. Being pregnant and giving birth to a child, particular particularly an unwanted one, is extremely burdensome for women economically, socially, mentally and physically. Somewhere in a comment thread you argued that if kidneys were regenerative, EAs would be arguing that everyone should donate kidneys once a year. I think this comparison makes it clear how much these costs are being minimized; having a child once a year, even if they didnât raise the children themselves, would likely have disastrous effects for the women doing it very quickly. Likewise, arguing that personal autonomy should be using in a certain way without recognizing that many women do not have the personal autonomy to make a choice at all feels callous at best.
Hi, thanks for your thoughtful comment! You bring up some great points which hadnât been raised yet.
Iâve updated from âneutralâ to âagreeâ with this over the conversation. While reducing abortion has emotional significance for me, it was an awful framing of my postâs policy proposals. I can imagine that even the suggestion of diverting funding from charities which reduce the amount of near-term future people to charities which accomplish similar object-level goals without that externality would have been met far more charitably without the priming on âvoluntary abortion reductionâ as a goal.
Good points here which offer some idiosyncratic benefits of family planning which are difficult to impossible to adequately replace with other interventions.
Yes, this is also the conclusion I reach from the post. Interestingly, it seems that we donât actually disagree on the object-level implications of philosophical views, but just have different philosophical views. For example, it seems that my weighting of longtermism versus the deontological considerations you outlined lean more towards longtermism than your weighting, which explains our object-level disagreement quite well.
Yep, this is a good argument, and youâve convinced me that my choice of section title âPersonal Autonomy Shouldnât Preclude Interventionâ incorrectly claims that the sectionâs argument shows more than it actually shows. The sectionâs argument only shows that EAs should be sympathetic to the idea that we have a moral duty to exercise our personal autonomy in a particular way, but not that this (in and of itself) justifies the interventions I later argued for.
How about I change the section title to âExercising Personal Autonomy to Help Othersâ?
To be fair, I donât think your post has been met uncharitablyâin fact, Iâd argue that the response has been extremely charitable despite the mismatch between stated goals and policy suggestions.
Iâm honestly quite opposed to the use of personal autonomy in this context. This is very related to the extant debates about abortion and public debates in general, where personal autonomy is broadly framed in terms of rights rather than as a synonym for âchoosing to do somethingâ. Your section starts with âWhen discussing abortion, it is crucial for us to emphasize the importance of personal autonomyâ, and I think that it is at best poorly worded and misleading to use personal autonomy in that way because of the way the term is generally used and understood in public and political debate. The reason personal autonomy is important to discussions about abortion is because there are a lot of external forces, most importantly legal ones, that prevent people from exercising their personal autonomy to get an abortion. The opposite of this isnât true for choosing to have a child. There is an argument to be made that the positive social right to have a child and to have the state subsidize the care of that child in one way or another is not being met and that diminishes the capacity of individuals to have as many children as they want because they donât have the means to care them, and that this is a question of personal autonomy, but I disagree with that argument and find it a stretch at best, and in any case that argument isnât being made. In itâs current form, using personal autonomy in that section reads like either a result of a poor understanding of the role of personal autonomy in debates about abortion or like a semantic maneuver the preemptively undermine objections on the ground of personal autonomy, which is particularly problematic because of suggestions to defund charities and intervention providing family planning and abortion services.
My understanding of your objection is that in the public discussion, personal autonomy is framed as a right, but in my post, itâs framed more as the ability to make choices which affect oneâs personal life. You believe that the latter framing insufficiently addresses the external forces which prevent some from exercising their personal autonomy, which you view as fundamental to the discussion of personal autonomy with respect to abortion. (Please let me know if anything about my characterization of your objection is incorrect, since this is the characterization Iâll be responding to.)
I think there are two reasons why weâre not seeing eye-to-eye on your objection:
Credence in utilitarianism versus deontology:
I hold much higher credence in utilitarianism than deontology, so I normally wouldnât speak of a ârightâ to free speech, or a ârightâ to personal autonomy, etc. Instead, I would frame free speech and personal autonomy as important normsâthe ability to choose what to say and the ability to choose what happens in oneâs personal lifeâwhich are instrumentally useful in realizing the utilitarian goal.
Your higher weighing of deontology seems like a factor in the greater focus you place on rights, which affects the insistence with which you believe external forces should have been addressed in the post.
Scope considerations:
In a post on voluntary hate speech reduction, I could write a section entitled âExercising Free Speech to Help Othersâ where I argue that even though free speech is a very important norm, we shouldnât make the choice to use our free speech to spread hate. Because the postâs scope specifically concerns voluntary interventions, I wouldnât feel it pressing to address external forces which prevent some from exercising their free speech (hate speech laws in Europe, repression in North Korea, etc) as theyâre out of scope.
As for your perspective, Iâm not sure whether your opinion is (a) that this postâs scope should be broader or (b) that even given this postâs stated scope, itâs still worth it to address the external forces you brought up.
(On mobile and canât do quotes)
Re: your characterization of my argument, framng personally autonomy as a right or an ability is a distinction without much difference here unless you argue that external forces that would change your right to have a child or an abortion doesnât effect your ability to have one, which is obviously untrue. If someone wants to have an abortion where itâs illegal, their ability to get an abortion is seriously constrained. Of someone wants to have a child where having children is illegal, their ability to have a child is seriously constrained as well. Ignoring this is either a myopic oversight or ignorant of the way political, economic, legal and social systems impact peopleâs choices and ability to make choices in the world. This also applies to your point on âCredence in deontology vs. utilitarianismââI donât see how a utilitarian or deontological framework changes this at all.
More importantly, the framing of voluntary abortion reduction means that people should choose to not do a certain thing, not they should or should be able to choose it. This doesnât immediately clash with personal autonomy as either of us have defined it when your proposition is formed as âpeople who want to have children should be able to have themâ, but when you form it as âpeople who are pregnant should have their childrenâ (which seems to me to be the actual argument of the post, based on the post and your comments) it is no longer a question of ability but of choice.
The reason I find the use of personal autonomy in the post objectionable is because using a term that is central to extant debates in a way that is disconnected from and unrelated to its use in those debates implies that it is response to those arguments without actually engaging with them. This was a bigger problem when the title was personal autonomy does not preclude intervention, but i still think the bidyif the section itself reads as disingenuous in a similar way. Debates around personal autonomy in relation to abortion are not about how one should exersize their personal autonomy, they are about whether or not pregnant people should have the right to exercise their personal autonomy. These are two different arguments and the language functions as semantic tool to separate them. Treating them as if they are the same is unproductive and incorrect, so differentiating between them is necessary.
âwhere I argue that even though free speech is a very important norm, we shouldnât make the choice to use our free speech to spread hate.â
I think this comparison fails because, although personal autonomy is a very important norm, the right to personal autonomy if pregnant people is being weakened or completely stripped away in many places in the world. Additionally, you are ostensibly making an argument in favor of personal autonomy (people should be able to have and raise ot adopt children if they want to), not against it (people should not be able to have abortions). This, to me, makes personal autonomy irrelevant to your proposal because you are arguing for a moral prescription because it is a prescription on how one should choose to act not on how they have the ability to act.
âAs for your perspective, Iâm not sure whether your opinion is (a) that this postâs scope should be broader or (b) that even given this postâs stated scope, itâs still worth it to address the external forces you brought up.â
I think that arguing against abortion without bringing up these external forces and the realities of pregnancy is deeply flawed. Although you make a passing concession to the costs of pregnancy in your post, I do think that these costs are severely minimized. Being pregnant and giving birth to a child, particular particularly an unwanted one, is extremely burdensome for women economically, socially, mentally and physically. Somewhere in a comment thread you argued that if kidneys were regenerative, EAs would be arguing that everyone should donate kidneys once a year. I think this comparison makes it clear how much these costs are being minimized; having a child once a year, even if they didnât raise the children themselves, would likely have disastrous effects for the women doing it very quickly. Likewise, arguing that personal autonomy should be using in a certain way without recognizing that many women do not have the personal autonomy to make a choice at all feels callous at best.