Thanks for writing this. You might be interested in this post from Toby on miscarriage.
My main question is about the tractability. Increasing the legal restrictions on abortion is definitely possible—the US has some of the weakest legal protections for life in the world, lagging far behind much of Europe etc, so there is a lot of room for improvement—but is already a heavily contested issue which could reduce your ability to make an incremental difference to the law. My understanding is that CEA did some research into abortion but never published it; possibly this is why. You could alternatively try to reduce the social pressures that cause people to feel they need to abort.
Reducing miscarriages doesn’t have the same political opposition, but a lot of miscarriages are due to chromosomal defects, and I don’t think there is currently any medical solution to this. Maybe rolling out the sort of interventions you linked to to wider populations could be good—e.g. the UK is only recently adding folic acid to cereal, something the US did decades ago.
Hey, thanks for the reply. I had read Toby’s piece some time ago, but didn’t cite it because I couldn’t find it. Now editing the original. Overall, I think Toby’s article is very pertinent, but potentially wrong. The very fact that many people do not support the “Conclusion” implies that there is a prevailing problem with the way people perceive the consequences of what they actually believe.
“The argument then, is as follows. The embryo has the same moral status as an adult human (the Claim). Medical studies show that more than 60% of all people are killed by spontaneous abortion (a biological fact). Therefore, spontaneous abortion is one of the most serious problems facing humanity, and we must do our utmost to investigate ways of preventing this death—even if this is to the detriment of other pressing issues (the Conclusion). I do not expect many people to accept the Conclusion.” [my addition: but perhaps they should?]
Regarding your other points on tractability, I personally find quite strong evidence that contraception, rather than legal barriers to abortion are the way to improve this. (see prior point about IUDs, or vasectomies)
Thanks for writing this. You might be interested in this post from Toby on miscarriage.
My main question is about the tractability. Increasing the legal restrictions on abortion is definitely possible—the US has some of the weakest legal protections for life in the world, lagging far behind much of Europe etc, so there is a lot of room for improvement—but is already a heavily contested issue which could reduce your ability to make an incremental difference to the law. My understanding is that CEA did some research into abortion but never published it; possibly this is why. You could alternatively try to reduce the social pressures that cause people to feel they need to abort.
Reducing miscarriages doesn’t have the same political opposition, but a lot of miscarriages are due to chromosomal defects, and I don’t think there is currently any medical solution to this. Maybe rolling out the sort of interventions you linked to to wider populations could be good—e.g. the UK is only recently adding folic acid to cereal, something the US did decades ago.
Hey, thanks for the reply. I had read Toby’s piece some time ago, but didn’t cite it because I couldn’t find it. Now editing the original. Overall, I think Toby’s article is very pertinent, but potentially wrong. The very fact that many people do not support the “Conclusion” implies that there is a prevailing problem with the way people perceive the consequences of what they actually believe.
Regarding your other points on tractability, I personally find quite strong evidence that contraception, rather than legal barriers to abortion are the way to improve this. (see prior point about IUDs, or vasectomies)