I would expect that apart from contraception global health interventions to be most helpful in reducing deaths of unborn humans. Miscarriages and stillbirths are a much bigger deal than abortions, and in developing countries there is still a lot of room for health interventions to help for little money.
I would be surprised if other interventions to reduce unborn deaths were very cost-effective, even if you have a worldview which values embryos as much as newborns.*
I’d just be curious to see a writeup, especially of the impact of contraception access. Unborn humans don’t feature in traditional QALY-based effectiveness analyses and I’d be interested how the results would change if they were included, even if at a discounted rate. I am not expecting this to be a promising area for most people interested in effective altruism.
*An exception might be if you value pre-implantation blastocysts as much as born humans, in which case your priority could well be to sterilize everyone. See also Toby Ord’s paper The Scourge.
I would expect that apart from contraception global health interventions to be most helpful in reducing deaths of unborn humans. Miscarriages and stillbirths are a much bigger deal than abortions, and in developing countries there is still a lot of room for health interventions to help for little money.
I would be surprised if other interventions to reduce unborn deaths were very cost-effective, even if you have a worldview which values embryos as much as newborns.*
I’d just be curious to see a writeup, especially of the impact of contraception access. Unborn humans don’t feature in traditional QALY-based effectiveness analyses and I’d be interested how the results would change if they were included, even if at a discounted rate. I am not expecting this to be a promising area for most people interested in effective altruism.
*An exception might be if you value pre-implantation blastocysts as much as born humans, in which case your priority could well be to sterilize everyone. See also Toby Ord’s paper The Scourge.