Reporting parents to the police for a single false positive is not better in any way.
Law enforcement does not have unlimited resources that can be wasted every single time Google's algorithm screws up.
Are you arguing from LE perspective? Or from taxpayer perspective? LE is happy to enforce anything that gives them more power (vide civil forfeiture laws). And signal-to-noise problem is not really a problem if real signal is political expediency. Selective enforcement is the way.
The fact that Google refuses to put humans in the loop when they know the decisions made by their algorithms on this and other subjects are highly unreliable simply adds insult to injury.
Loosing access to your account because Google's algorithm screwed up is bad enough. Being accused of child abuse because you took a picture of your child's first bath is a bridge too far.
The problem with Apple’s privacy-conscious approach is that it conceded the fundamental principle and agreed that scanning private (unshared) photo repositories was reasonable. Having conceded that point, everything is just a confusing technical argument about effectiveness-versus-restrictions.
Apple would have been under continuous law enforcement pressure to enhance their limited technology so that it was “as effective” as Google’s ML-based scanners. They might have resisted the pressure for a while, but once you’ve conceded the easily-understood principle then all you have to respond with is dull technical arguments that society at large won’t understand. Law enforcement would have (correctly) argued that Apple had agreed that CSAM scanning of private files was justified, so why are they using a creaky old technology that can’t find novel CSAM and is letting bad guys get away with child abuse? Eventually law enforcement would have won that battle and Apple would have been forced to deploy an ML-based scanner, which would have undermined the thoughtful privacy protections deployed in their first version.