Given the availability of adoption, “inconvenient” seems like a reasonable description for “timing is wrong”.
I agree, however, that sometimes it might cause substantial suffering—hence why I suggested an annualized figure of 0.494 QALYs. That’s a very high number! It suggests pregnant women would be almost indifferent between
pregnancy and then adoption
a 50% chance of going into a coma for the rest of the year
which seems if anything to assign too great a negative weight to pregnancy.
In I think we need to be very careful of availability bias and scope insensitivity. Our individual preferences, and the suffering of already existing, literate people are very cognitively available—the opportunity cost is not. Doing explicit QALY calculations allows us to avoid this, but we have to actually do the calculations.
The most frequently cited main motivation for aborting a fetus is
“Not ready for a(nother) child†/timing is wrong”
which does not mention suffering at all, and neither do the next two most frequently cited reasons
Can’t afford a baby now
Have completed my childbearing/have other people depending on me/children are grown
source
Given the availability of adoption, “inconvenient” seems like a reasonable description for “timing is wrong”.
I agree, however, that sometimes it might cause substantial suffering—hence why I suggested an annualized figure of 0.494 QALYs. That’s a very high number! It suggests pregnant women would be almost indifferent between
pregnancy and then adoption
a 50% chance of going into a coma for the rest of the year
which seems if anything to assign too great a negative weight to pregnancy.
In I think we need to be very careful of availability bias and scope insensitivity. Our individual preferences, and the suffering of already existing, literate people are very cognitively available—the opportunity cost is not. Doing explicit QALY calculations allows us to avoid this, but we have to actually do the calculations.