Matthew Yglesias thinks instructively about why people imagine some kinds of preventable deaths are more important than others.
It’s quite true that human beings do not have a great intuitive grasp of statistical arguments or a great love for them. But the world would be a better place if people thought of these things in a more statistically informed way. Likewise it’s true as Jon Chait says that people generally think differently about intentional murders than thinks like car crashes. But this, though it’s definitely a fact of life, is also a problem that it would be good to ameliorate over the long run. People tend to view threats stemming from identifiable, individual villains as more problematic than impersonal ones. But while this is a fact of life, it’s also a mistake. If we do something to very slightly reduce the risk of a terrorist attack that has the inadvertent consequence of causing a large number of additional highway deaths then that would be a mistake.
I’m… fairly confident many of the same principle applies to matters of sex, choice, reproduction and contraception, agency and autonomy, etc. Opposition to hormonal contraception, for instance, not because of the small but real risk of embolism or thrombosis in the woman who takes it but instead an infinitesimal-to-the-point-of-imagination risk that ovulation and fertilization of a hypothetical “life” might somehow magically occur… and yet somehow not implant. To name one. To name another, fanatic willingness to murder healthcare providers in church over abortion but absolute zero, nothing, none interest, at all, in parting a hair to prevent about approximately equal numbers of miscarriages (environmental- or stress-induced or otherwise)... or to do anything at all about stillbirths, infant or maternal mortality, or prevention of childhood deaths from, say, asthma.
But again it’s a general principle. Although expand the scope just a teeny tiny bit and you’re left wondering about the “moral” hesitation in the early 1980s that allowed HIV to become a global epidemic instead of a relatively isolated outbreak, where squeamishness about thousands of “h-word” people (hemophiliacs, heroine users, and homosexuals) mainly in the U.S. allowed it to spread to tens of millions of “pa-word” people (pretty-much anybody.)
I think it has at least
Submitted by Nightfall (not verified) on Tue, 2010-01-12 00:58.I think it has at least partly to do with how people imagine threats. When most people think about cars, they don’t normally imagine dying from a car crash. This is because cars are primarily a useful tool in their lives, rather than a source of danger. When they imagine a terrorist or a murderer or a wild tiger, the potential for death is usually foremost in their thoughts.
On the other hand, as I child I was in two car crashes and hit by a car while on foot. Fortunately I wasn’t seriously injured any of those times (when I was hit the driver braked just soon enough that I was merely knocked down), but it still colored my image of cars as hazardous death machines, so it’s not universal.
Likewise, for those who consider sex to be about making babies above all else, they’re going to worry about the immediate fate of a “potential fetus” more than the future health of the non-mother.
[Ooh! It’s off topic, Nightfall, but about that last part I just realized it’s not so much about babies as about a really, really deep notion that a) sex must be deserved and not merely enjoyed, b) it’s women’s duty to correctly bestow sex on deserving men, and c) having an undesired pregnancy is a sign that either you gave sex to someone unworthy or else you’d want to keep the baby. Because I’m pretty sure it’s missing a huge dimension to say the think of sex as about making babies above all.
Cool point on your perspective on car crashes. I can see how, yeah, that would alter your take on them. Thanks. —fl]