With the recent Roe v Wade decision many are thinking about ways to support reproductive rights in America.
I'm not here to argue that this is a global priority or a more important cause area than others. I'm instead here to ask, given one considers reproductive rights in America an important cause area, what actions are most effective to increase things like access to abortion, contraception, and family planning?
I'd be interested in things like studies of what interventions work best, data on what orgs might make most effective use marginal donations, etc.
ETA: I'm not very interested here in discussing the question of if reproductive rights of Americans are an EA cause area. There's one comment about this from user Larks. I'll ask future comments about this topic to be deleted as off topic. I'm only interested here in the question of, assuming you accept this is a cause area to do something about, what can we say about the ways to do the most good assuming that framing. I'm asking it that way because I specifically want to avoid discussing a charged political issue on the forum. If it would make people happy, I'd be just as interested to see a similar question asking for the best ways to restrict access to abortion and contraception.
I have downvoted this comment.
I broadly resonate with the message that EAs should focus on the things that make them unique and that we should uphold the mentality of figuring out the most impact.
But I think some parts of the EA mindset would be very useful to tackle some other important issues like reproductive rights, and I think we should encourage playful and scientific exploration of topics.
These explorations are good exercises of cost effectiveness analysis, will help us find new problems to tackle and curiosity is a great value to promote.
I think this is a reasonable position, but I don't think it's a convincing defense of the OP. "Does it make sense to fly business class, and if so when" is a plausible 'playful and scientific exploration', that could benefit from EA-style analysis. But "how can I get my employer to let me fly business" is not, because the it assumes the part of the question - whether flying business class at all is good - where EA considerations can bring the most light. Considering a wide range of possible issues can help us find new problems to tackle, and hence is worthwhile as you said, but not if you simply assume they are good things to work on - you have to actually analyze this question, including the potential that the exact opposite is true.
I disagree. Questions like this one (or like what is the best NGO for hunger relief in Somalia?) are relevant to doing good better. Even if you think (eg) abortion access is bad on the margin, many reasonable people think it's good, and regardless some interventions are more robustly good than others. Insofar as someone is trying to do the most good with their resources, they should consider many possible causes; insofar as resources are locked in the particular goal of expanding reproductive rights, they should look for the very best interventions in that domain.
I notice a similarity to this post.
Somebody writes about an issue that happens to be a popular mainstream cause and asks, "how can I be most effective at doing good, given that I want to work specifically on this cause?"
I'm not saying the two issues are remotely equivalent. Obviously, to argue "this should be an EA cause area" would require very different arguments, and one might be much stronger than the other. With Ukraine, maybe you could justify it as being adjacent to nuclear risk, but the post wasn't talking about nuclear risk. Maybe close to being a... (read more)
I've edited my post to make it clear I think this is an off topic discussion within the context of this question. I think it's fine for this comment to stay because it was there before I made this clarification, but I have asked the moderators to convert this from an answer to a proper comment.