“What are the most effective global health charities if you’re pronatalist or ‘pro-life’?” by Jack_S🔸
Description
This post is written as part of the Draft Amnesty Week; it's an idea I've been thinking about for a while. Most of the figures here are rough, “best-guess” estimates, so please suggest improvements!
Summary
- Most global health charities and evaluations focus on Lives Saved or DALYs (Disability-Adjusted Life Years), which generally only focus on post-birth outcomes
- However, according to (in my view) reasonable assumptions, birth is an arbitrary dividing line, and unborn children and potential lives also have moral worth
- I divide worldviews into a simplified "pro-life" person-affecting worldview (early life has moral worth, foetuses count as people) and a simplified "pronatalist" non-person-affecting worldview (the more humans, the better, regardless of whether they exist). I also consider an anti-natalist worldview briefly for comparison
- I focus on global health interventions, and find that:
- If unborn lives are given moral weight, many mainstream interventions - malaria prevention [...]
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Outline:
(00:24 ) Summary
(01:44 ) Overview Table
(02:05 ) Intro
(03:07 ) Why research this?
(05:05 ) View A: Early life has moral worth; foetuses count as people
(06:19 ) Pregnancy Loss Numbers & Causes
(08:26 ) Hypertensive Disorders
(09:28 ) Maternal malnutrition and anaemia
(11:39 ) Infections (other than malaria)
(13:46 ) Malaria
(14:49 ) So, AMF?
(17:30 ) Abortion and explicitly pro-life charities
(19:46 ) View B: More people = better world; potential lives are intrinsically valuable
(21:20 ) STI screening and treatment (chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis)
(22:35 ) Schistosomiasis control
(23:59 ) Safe delivery and post-abortion care
(25:33 ) View C... What if youre anti-natalist?
(26:46 ) Conclusion
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First published:
October 18th, 2025
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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