Suspend our support for charities which reduce the amount of near-term future people until we can systematically review the effect of the above moral considerations on the morality of the charities’ interventions.
Would involve involuntary abortion reduction.
I also agree with Denise that if you cared about reducing voluntary abortion or just unwanted pregnancies generally, long acting contraceptives seem the most effective way to do that. But it seems that you’re not sure if unwanted pregnancies are a bad thing.
Finally I know there’s a greater demand for baby adoption than supply in high income countries but I would guess that this isn’t true in low income countries.
I would like to see much more discussion on how the burden of having kids could be spread better over more people (not just mothers but fathers, grandparents, professional caregivers) and also society generally. As it stands, an unwanted pregnancy, and especially a decision to keep the baby, places outsized burden on the mother, and I think that’s part of why this is such a difficult issue. As examples,
Matt Yglesias’ book one billion Americans has lots of ideas on how everything from housing supply to public transportation could be made better to support more people.
I also want to note that there are wide-reaching societal effects of abortion access; this paper makes the case that the legalization of Roe V Wade in the 70s accounted for a 10% decrease in crime in the 90s (a quarter of the total crime decrease that happened in the 90s) https://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf
I disagree more on this, though. Of course there are wide-reaching societal effects, but I think the link re: crime was pretty decisively debunked by various economists—I found Lott and Whitley’s response particularly compelling: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-7295.2006.00040.x. I would argue that most of the other negative effects of limiting abortion access have also been highly exaggerated (I have a paper in the International Family Law Journal on this topic and happy to send to anyone interested by email).
Then in addition there are considerable negative societal effects—e.g. increased STD transmission rates, increased family breakdown (and hence poverty), etc. Even aside from any consideration of the moral value of the embryo or fetus, I think there’s a decent consequentialist case against abortion access.
I’m pretty sure that in the way that increasing sentence lengths isn’t effective for deterring crime, reducing access to abortion isn’t effective for reducing STD transmission. And I’m pretty sure less family planning is related to more poverty, not less.
increasing sentence lengths isn’t effective for deterring crime
The main argument is that increasing sentence length reduces crime through incapacitation, not deterrence. Even if no-one is ever deterred, if criminals are imprisoned after their first assault you have prevented the subsequent crimes. (see for example discussion here).
I’m not sure I see the connection. The economic evidence that I’ve seen suggests that, pretty consistently in a wide variety of settings, increased abortion access has been responsible for pretty large increases in STI transmission (https://academic.oup.com/aler/article-abstract/14/2/457/162853). I’m not aware of any counterevidence, though there may be some.
I’m also not persuaded re: family planning. Yes, family planning can help relieve poverty in some cases. But on a wide-reaching societal level, I think the poverty that has resulted (especially among women) from family breakdown has probably more than compensated for any potential financial benefits: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2946680
Though Calum brings some evidence in the other direction, I’d like to make it clear that I’m willing to bite the bullet on this one. I think the scale of abortion completely dominates concerns about crime rates.
Here’s an explanation of why I wouldn’t characterize it that way.
But it seems that you’re not sure if unwanted pregnancies are a bad thing.
I think it’s a more nuanced discussion than most give it credit for! On the one hand, pregnancy exerts a substantial cost on a woman, especially when it’s unwanted. On the other hand, the child stands to live or lose an entire life’s worth of hopes, joys, pains, and regrets. In an unwanted pregnancy, someone’s going to have a sad outcome either way—even when giving the child up for adoption, the mother mourns the child she’ll never be able to raise. The “Personal Autonomy Shouldn’t Preclude Intervention” section summarizes my thoughts.
I would like to see much more discussion on how the burden of having kids could be spread better over more people (not just mothers but fathers, grandparents, professional caregivers) and also society generally.
On your point, I couldn’t agree more, and that’s why I include both of your links in the “In Our Personal Lives” section. On having more discussion of spreading the cost of children over more people than just the mother, my weakness of not yet being a parent comes through—I’ve always felt unqualified to talk about it! I’d love to listen to and understand more about your lived experience as a mother.
Agree entirely on the last part and I think these suggestions are very helpful. If you know of any other more in-depth discussions on these issues I’d be very grateful to see them.
My only disagreements with this post is that
Would involve involuntary abortion reduction.
I also agree with Denise that if you cared about reducing voluntary abortion or just unwanted pregnancies generally, long acting contraceptives seem the most effective way to do that. But it seems that you’re not sure if unwanted pregnancies are a bad thing.
Finally I know there’s a greater demand for baby adoption than supply in high income countries but I would guess that this isn’t true in low income countries.
I would like to see much more discussion on how the burden of having kids could be spread better over more people (not just mothers but fathers, grandparents, professional caregivers) and also society generally. As it stands, an unwanted pregnancy, and especially a decision to keep the baby, places outsized burden on the mother, and I think that’s part of why this is such a difficult issue. As examples,
Matt Yglesias’ book one billion Americans has lots of ideas on how everything from housing supply to public transportation could be made better to support more people.
I also really like this piece from 99% invisible about how Japan’s city infrastructure is made safe enough that toddlers can run errands by themselves. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/first-errand/
this piece explaining why universal child payments is better than universal childcare is also pretty good. https://criticalscience.medium.com/on-the-science-of-daycare-4d1ab4c2efb4
I also want to note that there are wide-reaching societal effects of abortion access; this paper makes the case that the legalization of Roe V Wade in the 70s accounted for a 10% decrease in crime in the 90s (a quarter of the total crime decrease that happened in the 90s) https://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf
I disagree more on this, though. Of course there are wide-reaching societal effects, but I think the link re: crime was pretty decisively debunked by various economists—I found Lott and Whitley’s response particularly compelling: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-7295.2006.00040.x. I would argue that most of the other negative effects of limiting abortion access have also been highly exaggerated (I have a paper in the International Family Law Journal on this topic and happy to send to anyone interested by email).
Then in addition there are considerable negative societal effects—e.g. increased STD transmission rates, increased family breakdown (and hence poverty), etc. Even aside from any consideration of the moral value of the embryo or fetus, I think there’s a decent consequentialist case against abortion access.
I’m pretty sure that in the way that increasing sentence lengths isn’t effective for deterring crime, reducing access to abortion isn’t effective for reducing STD transmission. And I’m pretty sure less family planning is related to more poverty, not less.
The main argument is that increasing sentence length reduces crime through incapacitation, not deterrence. Even if no-one is ever deterred, if criminals are imprisoned after their first assault you have prevented the subsequent crimes. (see for example discussion here).
Yes… it would be great if the criminal justice system could actually rehabilitate people rather than mostly just punishing them.
I’m not sure I see the connection. The economic evidence that I’ve seen suggests that, pretty consistently in a wide variety of settings, increased abortion access has been responsible for pretty large increases in STI transmission (https://academic.oup.com/aler/article-abstract/14/2/457/162853). I’m not aware of any counterevidence, though there may be some.
I’m also not persuaded re: family planning. Yes, family planning can help relieve poverty in some cases. But on a wide-reaching societal level, I think the poverty that has resulted (especially among women) from family breakdown has probably more than compensated for any potential financial benefits: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2946680
Though Calum brings some evidence in the other direction, I’d like to make it clear that I’m willing to bite the bullet on this one. I think the scale of abortion completely dominates concerns about crime rates.
Hi Ruth, great to hear from you!
Here’s an explanation of why I wouldn’t characterize it that way.
I think it’s a more nuanced discussion than most give it credit for! On the one hand, pregnancy exerts a substantial cost on a woman, especially when it’s unwanted. On the other hand, the child stands to live or lose an entire life’s worth of hopes, joys, pains, and regrets. In an unwanted pregnancy, someone’s going to have a sad outcome either way—even when giving the child up for adoption, the mother mourns the child she’ll never be able to raise. The “Personal Autonomy Shouldn’t Preclude Intervention” section summarizes my thoughts.
On your point, I couldn’t agree more, and that’s why I include both of your links in the “In Our Personal Lives” section. On having more discussion of spreading the cost of children over more people than just the mother, my weakness of not yet being a parent comes through—I’ve always felt unqualified to talk about it! I’d love to listen to and understand more about your lived experience as a mother.
Agree entirely on the last part and I think these suggestions are very helpful. If you know of any other more in-depth discussions on these issues I’d be very grateful to see them.