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Reasons Not to Care

2022-05-17 · letter vlog · John · 3:44 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Global development · mode: Personal essay · tags: timely hook, fundraising ask, heavy topic

Responding to a top reply asking why a pregnant 17-year-old in Sierra Leone was 'unexpectedly' pregnant, John argues that we all look for reasons not to care; empathy has limits, but denying others' suffering harms them and us, health disparities come from inequity, and system strengthening is cutting maternal mortality.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The Washington Post story about Susan and the top reply to John's retweet

  • ★★ Last week (week of 9 May 2022) the Washington Post published a story about 17-year-old Susan facing an unexpected high-risk pregnancy in Sierra Leone; her mother died in childbirth. — 00:00:00 · Sierra Leone, maternal death
  • ★★★ John says one in 20 women in Sierra Leone will die from being pregnant. — 00:00:00 · Sierra Leone, maternal death
  • ★★ John retweeted the story; the reply Twitter showed most people asked how she became unexpectedly pregnant and whether she had sex without protection. — 00:00:29 · Twitter
  • ★★ John notes the article answers that question and encourages everyone to read it. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — We look for reasons not to care; empathy has limits, but denying suffering is a disservice

  • ★★ John says focusing on the word 'unexpectedly' in a story about a girl trying to survive a high-risk pregnancy rather misses the point. — 00:00:58
  • ★★★ John says something near-universal drives the reply: we all look for reasons not to care, and especially not to intervene. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ With a new horror in our feeds every 280 characters or 10 TikTok seconds, we can't respond to every crisis, so we look for reasons not to: they did it to themselves, the government's corrupt. — 00:00:58 · Twitter, TikTok
  • ★★★ As they discussed recently, John says nobody can care about everything all the time: empathy has limits, and must; grieving every death like a loved one's would make functioning impossible. — 00:01:27 · empathy
  • ★★ John says 155,000 people are going to die today. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ If our way out of limited empathy is to deny or minimize others' suffering, we do them and ourselves a great disservice. — 00:01:56 · empathy
  • ★★★ There will always be a reason not to care; if people or causes must pass an imagined purity test for our compassion, we can extend it to no one, including ourselves. — 00:01:56 · empathy
  • ★★ Susan's pregnancy was unexpected because she had been told she couldn't get pregnant. — 00:01:56

00:02:26 — Health disparities come from inequity; Sierra Leone's falling maternal mortality shows systems matter

  • ★★★ John says health disparities are driven not by personal choices or values but by inequity and injustice. — 00:02:26 · health equity
  • ★★★ System strengthening can radically reduce maternal mortality: as Sierra Leone's health system grows stronger, partly through the community's investments, maternal mortality there fell over 10% in five years. — 00:02:26 · Sierra Leone, maternal death, Nerdfighteria
  • ★★ The gains come from government commitments, Sierra Leonean health workers' hard work, and people choosing to care and focus resources on a world where no one dies for want of a transfusion or C-section. — 00:02:55 · Sierra Leone, Nerdfighteria

  • ★★★ John says the question is not whether someone should have expected a pregnancy but whether someone should be able to expect to survive pregnancy. — 00:02:55

    “This is about whether someone should be able to expect to survive pregnancy.”

00:03:24 — P.S. donation link and sign-off

  • ★★★ John asks viewers who want to donate to the project to radically reduce maternal mortality in Sierra Leone to give at pih.org/hankandjohn, and thanks everyone for caring. — 00:03:24 · Partners In Health, Sierra Leone

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: empathy · maternal death · Sierra Leone · Susan

Also: Organizations: Partners In Health · The Washington Post · TikTok · Twitter

Concepts: Caesarean section · compassion fatigue · health equity · just-world hypothesis · unintended pregnancy

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