It is a choice to not actively solve for the suffering, so find an inexpensive point of leverage to attempt to solve for it. Folks seeking this healthcare are being marginalized by the system at great cost realized as externalities, and therefore require empowerment (with strong positive second order effects). Like vaccinations, prevention is far cheaper than the alternatives.
Tangentially, it's kind of wild to think that the global population boom, billions of people, over the last ~100 years was because of women not being empowered [1], broadly speaking. Because as soon as women are empowered [2], educated, and have robust access to contraceptives, boom, fertility rate plummets off a cliff. Turns out, society (economic pyramid schemes leading to pearl clutching about rapidly declining populations) and men [3] [4] want more children than women do.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40982392 (citations)
[3] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/women-children-study-1.711984...
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/20/paid-paternity...
I'm pretty sure that given the support they needed, and a society that didn't program them all the way to want other things in life more; the numbers would look very different.
And that IS the long term problem.
Which is not at all an excuse for not solving other problems, I don't feel it has to be one or the other.
Society very much has, and is, changing; drastically, exponentially. And in an increasingly destructive direction for quite a while now.
And it will have to change into something more constructive, humane, rational; if it wants to survive at all.
Prof Scott Galloway asks, "Do we love our children? [1]" I can prove that we don't, beyond a shadow of a doubt. It is clear as day.
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/scott_galloway_how_the_us_is_destr...
Once you drift too far away from basic human needs and the truth, something will happen, and we're more or less there if you ask me.
Is it that or something else?
But I still think the largest indictment of humanity is our failure to care for our home. Buckminster Fuller gave us the idea of "Starship Earth"; that we are all the crew of a spaceship that winds through the galaxy and we must all cooperate to maintain it for those that come after. It seems almost certain now that we will not make it.
So I bought and operate a domain which points to the r/childfree subreddit wiki list of doctors [2] who will provide permanent birth control to people who want it without onerous conditions such as partner approval, being over 30, or having at least two or three kids first. I run marketing campaigns on socials with this digital property. Next steps are building a site to act as a "store locator" app for this data. My partner and I also contribute in r/sterilization for those seeking permanent birth control, helping folks navigate insurance (bisalps in the US are free under most insurance situations, and vasectomies are covered at 100% in 10 states) and logistics.
High level, we should collectively be robustly supporting parents who want to be parents, but we must aggressively assist though who would rather not. 40% of US domestic pregnancies every year are unintended [3]. ~600k children are in the foster care system [4], very roughly half of which are adoptable but are never adopted. It costs ~$310k to raise a child from 0-18 in the US [5], and this does not include daycare or college costs.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40053774
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/childfree/wiki/doctors
[3] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-u...
[4] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-kids-are-in-foster-ca...
[5] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Brookin...