https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MwmdpSBMuzNDmvNHp/the-effective-altruist-case-for-pro-life-anti-abortion
Summary • 1. There is a good case that abortion is morally impermissible – or at least there is significant moral uncertainty. 2. Even if these arg…
There is a good case that abortion is morally impermissible – or at least there is significant moral uncertainty.
it’s actually kind of rare that one of these loses me in the first sentence (cause TESCREALs don’t know about brevity so usually their point is buried under an avalanche of words) but here we are. the only people who can’t imagine a morally permissible abortion just don’t give a fuck about women
Moral uncertainty is reason to become pro-life? We do morally uncertain things every day. That's no reason to legislate.
"Put another way, even if one believes abortion is permissible, it likely remains a comparable problem to any problem of infant mortality – but with even more lost life-years, and occurring on a much larger scale than infant mortality".
Well, it isn't comparable, because abortion prevents forced birth, and forced birth is a form of torture. As indeed is being forced to care for a child in poverty.
"Other responses to Thomson highlight various other disanalogies between pregnancy and the violinist situation: In most cases of abortion, the woman is responsible for both the child’s neediness and their intimate biological relationship with the woman – unlike the violinist case. Other responses to Thomson highlight various other disanalogies between pregnancy and the violinist situation: In most cases of abortion, the woman is responsible for both the child’s neediness and their intimate biological relationship with the woman – unlike the violinist case."
Bit of a bold statement, and likely untrue. It is impossible for a woman to know even when having unprotected sex if it will result in a pregnancy. Contraceptive technologies fail. And what about the responsibility of the father? It takes two.
"n the case of abortion, the woman is the mother of the child[6] – unlike the violinist case.[7]"
Ok, this is meaningless.
"The violinist is in an unnatural situation and being hooked up to the stranger is an unnatural position – by contrast, the fetus is exactly where she is supposed to be in her ‘natural habitat’."
Not in my womb, it isn't, motherfucker!
Quite a lot of pregnancies end early in miscarriage.
Well, it isn’t comparable, because abortion prevents forced birth, and forced birth is a form of torture. As indeed is being forced to care for a child in poverty.
Fun fact, abortion also prevents infanticide. Prolifers either don't realise how pragmatic humans are, or are really into killing actual babies.
There are many horrible examples from 20th century Ireland - as well as stillbirths or accidental deaths. Several are mentioned in the "Letters to Ann" radio documentary, based on correspondence received by a popular Irish radio programme in the early 80s.
I think there have been large scale longitudinal studies in the US that recorded a drop in infanticide in states with legal abortion - of course this boyo doesn't mention any studies like that, even to criticize them. because this is a plain ol' anti-abortion polemic, not a literature review - all the sources and statistics are there for purely cosmetic purposes.
"6)deaths from abortion are a function of infrastructure, not law: pro-life countries/regions with good healthcare (e.g. Chile, Poland, Malta, South Korea (until recently), Ireland (until recently), North Africa, UAE, and almost all of Europe pre-legalisation) have very few, in many cases zero, deaths from abortion ."
Despite our good (?) healthcare, there was a high-profile death due to lack of abortion access in Ireland: Savita Halappanavar. And that's despite the fact that from 1996 (?) to 2018 abortion was legally permitted to "protect the life of the mother", if a panel of doctors agreed her life was in danger. In addition to Savita's death there was a case in which a raped, pregnant teenager became suicidal, but because doctors did not agree she should have an abortion, she was committed and put on suicide watch. How's that for harm? Women who travelled abroad for abortions also experienced significant medical and psychological harm as a result: consider the case of A, B and C vs. Ireland.
Yeah nah, we had (in Poland) at least a few high profile cases where pregnant women died because they were denied abortion, directly due to recent-ish abortion bans
I'm really sorry. During 2018 Irish feminists were really looking to Poland, there was even an Irish "Strike for Repeal" modelled on the Polish women's strike. Horrific stories are leaking out from America too. I really think Irish abortion activists need to do more to show solidarity with countries where abortion is threatened or banned.
well, we just had elections and new govt is expected to at least reverse the worst bits. this won't happen until early next year tho. (still) currently governing PiS took a hit in polls from some 42% to some 30% due to these bans and subsequent protests in 2020-2021, from which they never recovered and that cost them elections. you could say it kinda works just not as fast as everyone would like it
bonus side effect: now, solely due to that fundamentalist fuckery, there's more support of not only going back to what was before, but going in line with other euro countries ie unrestricted access to abortion
Great to hear that. I did hear about the recent election but wasn't sure where things were, what Tusk's views are etc.
"While there is (in my view) a commendable case for opposing abortion (an action I leave intentionally broad/vague)"
Yeah you would want to, wouldn't you. Don't want any specifics to crack your veneer of moral righteousness.
EA is just logocentrics trying to shoehorn their 8-bit thinking on to an analog world. The whole endeavor is word-games because the defining "effective" is critical, while doing altruism is incidental.
suppose "effective" means maximizing the freedom, contributions, and life outcomes of women. All of a sudden, the facts&logic point to the opposite conclusion. Funny that.
I see the former evangelical Christians who were converted into EAs are busy redpilling themselves back into their original beliefs
@lobotomy42 @dgerard Well eventually, because of roko's basilisk and on a long enough timeline I am bored of this argument let's just do awful things and justify them later like we used to.
Such lovely people. Ugh.
@lobotomy42 @cstross boosted even though I never really understood the red pill blue pill idiocy.
On one hand it's encouraging that the comments are mostly pushing back.
On the other hand a lot of them do so on the basis of a disagreement over the moral calculus of how many chickens a first trimester fetus should be worth, and whether that makes pushing for abortion bans inefficient compared to efforts to reduce the killing of farm animals for food.
Which, while pants-on-head bizarre in any other context, seems fairly normal by EA standards.
Yeah, it’s all Peter singer eugenics all the way down. They can’t see any way to defend abortion without measuring intellectual and pain–sensing capacity. Dipshits.
Rationalism really fries their brains but good.
I shouldn’t have to say this, but reporting an instance admin’s post for a joke you didn’t understand is incredibly bannable
Please forgive me if I fail to address it in a sufficiently sensitive way, and know that this was not my intention. There is, of course, so much more to say about this, but I wanted to try and keep the post relatively short.
(Proceeds to write 5000 word insensitive essay anyway)
This is the push/pull abusive dynamic: feign sensitivity, deny negative implications as not their intention, but demand positive feedback for dangerous takes. EA believes that not being wrong or held accountable is the most important optimization, so all their positions come from having absolutely no stake in the real world consequences.
I was elected to sneer not to read so I'm not spending 23 minutes on that. But I do wonder if you could refurbish large parts of this blog post to argue that masturbation is murder (when cismen do it). One counter argument against this is denying the full moral status of the semen.
MORE POSTS LIKE THIS
What I thought about child marriage as a cause area, and how I've changed my mind
lol
The opening line is... certainly a phrase.
I have been working on a research project into the scale, tractability and neglectedness of child marriage.
Later:
Some studies even showed that child marriage was associated with more positive outcomes, such as higher contraceptive use
Ummmmmmmmmm
The fucking table really got me, like, what an absolutely mad idiot.
And then I see this reply.
I notice you have a table collecting and assessing possible harms from the practice but no similar table collecting and assessing possible benefits. In deciding whether to fight against some practice shouldn't we want to figure out the net effect - benefits minus costs - rather than just costs?
Given how widespread the social phenomenon is, surely there must be some benefits?
( Something something Chesterton's fence...)
Near as I can tell, the people who think it's terrible are in large part motivated by largely-false quasi-Mathusian claims related to "overpopulation". If we set those aside, younger brides tend to have more kids; all else being equal we should assume those kids have lots of extra QALYs (that wouldn't otherwise exist) and also presumably make their parents happy. Are those married as children happier adults on average than those not? How do we balance a claimed higher risk of physical abuse against, say, a lower risk of ending up childless or alone or financially insecure?
Food for thought.
One of the least studied rationalist tics is “as far as I can tell, most people who believe X is bad think so because Y reason which nobody has ever brought up, but which I find easy to disregard”
( Something something Chesterton’s fence…)
Y'know I wasn't expecting to see any award-winning arguments when I clicked the link to see the 'full' version of their post, but I'm still a little surprised that literally all the reason they gave was "something something Chesterton's fence." That's just pathetic.
Near as I can tell, the people who think it’s terrible are in large part motivated by largely-false quasi-Mathusian claims related to “overpopulation”.
somehow this person has gone their entire life without ever hearing about the concept of "conesnt"
A long time ago somebody sneeringly called themotte an 'empathy removal centre', and it is good to see EA is picking up the torch.
Usually with terrible EA arguments I get bogged down in wanting to actually disagree with their bad logic and foul morals, but the advantage of bad faith forced-birth arguments (and bad faith eugenicsy abortion “defenses”) is that they’ve all been done to death and my entire response is à la blazing saddles
The only acceptable response. My body, my life, my right to decide. No surprise that someone in the "women are dumb" cult doesn't understand that women have bodily autonomy, and even thinks that "mother" is "someone who has no bodily autonomy".
oops read the comments under that clip of yours. Mistake (in 2 comments it is 'women should not be teachers')
@dgerard looks like Dr Miller here is completely rationally and altruistically examining the issues despite being one of the go-to “sciencey words” providers of various fundamentalist organisations in the UK.
I remember when LW at least tried to prevent this by doing the 'epistemic status' thing (which was a bit silly as it depended on the honesty of the author but at least they tried, and I am annoyed they gave up on that).
Edit: I was looking up a source for what you said (and discovered Miller has deleted his twitter) and came across this: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cpk3gZqLkQ1/ "Ever wondered what it's like to be pro-life and in the medical sphere? Look no further and join Alexandra as she speaks to the UK's most prolife-ic (see what we did there) doctor against abortion, Calum Miller." yeah really something he should have disclosed.
Edit 2: lol ow god he didn't delete his twitter he actually renamed it from cdoggmiller to DrCalumMiller but forgot to update his own blog. 'cdogg' ow god. He is also a pretty vocal anti leftwinger (at least in his student days). Edit 3 No wait, he still is
@Soyweiser He's also oddly reluctant to disclose in his polemic that his ongoing association with Oxford is as a research fellow at the tiny Blackfriars Hall, which is a combination Dominican friary and heavily Catholic college. Not wholly out of the question that the post is funded by, you know, "a group of concerned individuals".
Tradcaths gonna tradcath, but it's interesting he feels he can reach the EA audience with his views.
Tradcathery has the fascist hallmark of being an obviously modern/modernist ideology that claims to be an ancient religious tradition. Tradcathery as we know it today is very online. EA is also very online, and increasingly sour about social liberalism. Match made in hell.
It's evangelical christianity with extra steps
https://gerikson.com/m/2022/08/index.html#2022-08-10_wednesday_01
I don’t remember what their deal was, but back before twitter’s undeath, jewish twitter used to get harassed by trad lutherans. They all had 🦬 in their handles, tended to have husbandfather profiles, and were so extremely online that I always suspected (as I do with tradcaths) that for most of them it was just a bit. No particular evidence that they were just trollsonas, except that they were SO online.
eurgh. I think a lot of them probably delude themselves that they aren't just posting. but they are just posting. they're christians the way QAnon followers are political activists.
He also went on a 'why I changed my mind on abortion' video. 'changed your mind' sure buddy. I'd hope at least that his association with friars makes it very unlikely he actually pipebombs anything, he also didn't seem (in looking at his socials for like 5 minutes) to be the stochastic terrorism promoter type.
Pipebombs are more of an evangelical thing. Catholics prefer to use legal evil to block abortion access.
Is it just me or does the author just… not really spend any time trying to defend forced birth? Like, other than quoting counterarguments to abortion defences. It’s like he’s sort of assuming everyone already has ideas about why abortion itself is bad, but find it permissible for whatever reason. Is this a correct characterisation of the EA community? That they all harbour anti-abortion sentiment but for whatever reason permit abortion?
Overall it reads like a business proposal. Is this how you’re supposed to talk to an EA person? Instead of saying “here is why you should care about x”, you have to pitch them on the potential ROI of caring about something? If so, that’s a fucking frustrating way to think about the world, and this was a fucking awful article to read, just like every other treacles-y long form logorrhoea you get from these people.
EA is a movement for rich philanthropists to justify whatever they want to do, with data* and studies**. It's literally ends justifying the means.
*data it's heavily cherry picked for whatever you, the powerful and so smart philanthropist, want to accomplish
**studies are funded to guarantee results that you want
Yeah the studies he cites are all over the place. One about how single motherhood isn't fun, which would seem like an argument for abortion, not against? It's just the aul "contraception causes pregnancy" argument catholic pro-lifers used to lose.
He says like "well actually having access to abortion doesn't make women happier" , as if abortion isn't pretty essential to the happiness of SOME women. But he thinks if women are forced to have babies they'll realize that they really like it actually, because he's a wretched dog.
Bonus points for the part where he rails against contraception and sex education in the appendix, because we all know what this is really about.
Ah just like the prolife campaigner I argued with recently who said that in his* ideal world, abortion, contraception, and the morning-after pill would all be illegal. Apparently having an abortion is "irresponsible" because you're acting as if it's "someone else's problem". That really threw me for a loop. I mean, it's not like you can get someone else to have the abortion for you! He justified a contraception ban along the same lines - that people needed to accept the consequences of having sex, or something. I suggested to him that contraception was actually very effective at preventing abortions, and he frowned as if he couldn't understand what I was saying.
*Yes, he was a cis man who has never been pregnant or made anyone else pregnant. Sure, what else would you expect?
Is this a correct characterisation of the EA community? That they all harbour anti-abortion sentiment but for whatever reason permit abortion?
I actually wouldn't be surprised if this were the case -- the whole schtick of a lot of these people is "worrying about increasing the number of future possibly-existing humans, even at the cost of the suffering of actually-existing humans", so being anti-abortion honestly seems not too far out of their wheelhouse?
Like I think in the EAverse you can just kinda go "well this makes people have less kids which means less QALYs therefore we all know it's obviously bad and I don't really need to justify it." (with bonus internet contrarian points if you are justifying some terrible thing using your abstract math, because that means you're Highly Decoupled and Very Smart.) See also the quote elsewhere in this thread about the guy defending child marriage for similar reasons.
I actually wouldn’t be surprised if this were the case – the whole schtick of a lot of these people is “worrying about increasing the number of future possibly-existing humans, even at the cost of the suffering of actually-existing humans”, so being anti-abortion honestly seems not too far out of their wheelhouse?
Same energy as those score-maximising Tetris AIs that taught themselves to stack blocks to the kill line and pause.
Like I think in the EAverse you can just kinda go “well this makes people have less kids which means less QALYs therefore we all know it’s obviously bad and I don’t really need to justify it.” (with bonus internet contrarian points if you are justifying some terrible thing using your abstract math, because that means you’re Highly Decoupled and Very Smart.) See the quote elsewhere in this thread about the guy defending child marriage for similar reasons.
Ughhh yeah that sounds about right.
being anti-abortion honestly seems not too far out of their wheelhouse?
Meh. I've seen similar on here.
I got a ban the other day for pointing out some memes about blowing up McDonald's.
Funny part was I was immediately downvoteded to oblivion (one of the .ML domains) when I pointed out that they'd all freak the fuck out of it were abortion clinics.
Sometimes I play a little game with myself about how long it will be before somebody catches a ban in this community.
*Looks at your posting history*
Nah, that’s a sucker bet.
*wisely* McDonald's might seem shitty and exploitative. but a McDonald's is a physical thing, and so is an abortion clinic. seems a little hypocritical to blow up one but not the other p
