I disagree about moral progress. This does not mean that the evils you refer to have disappeared. But I think of what life was like in the Athenian democracy, say, the economy of which relied on slave-labour; no-one, anywhere, was saying slavery is wrong and we must end it. "Respectable" women were baby-machines; they lived in a separate part of the house, and men were ridiculously anxious about the possibility of their wives receiving lovers there and having babies by them that would be passed off as legitimate. Rape was basically considered an offence against the male guardian of a girl or woman, his rights of property in her. No-one was saying women should have the vote, women should have equal opportunities, women should have control over their own fertility. (The 'Lysistrata' is a comedy, not a documentary.) Unwanted babies were left on rubbish-heaps. There were no international rules about how to behave in war, about leaving civilians out if it, about the treatment of prisoners. And Athens was surrounded by states without even the rudimentary "democratic oversight" provided by the Athenian system—mainly hereditary autocracies.
Yes, people continue to behave abominably. But long decades, if not centuries, of voices calling them out, of selfless protest, of stubborn resistance, have produced some improvements, usually in the form of legislation, independent courts, and international agreements. These are not always effective. Proving someone did something in court is not easy. Convictions for rape in Britain are ridiculously low, still today—but where there has been change, it is for the better. Most people now regard rape as a brutal exercise of power, not an expression of love. Husbands no longer have the right to beat their wives or have sex with them whenever they want. Even in the late 70s/early 80s, when I worked for the Law Society which at the time adminsitered the civil legal aid scheme, it was rare to grant a wife aid to get a restraining order against and maintenance from her husband. It was only when the kids were in danger too that it became automatic. And it was generally accepted that she would go back to her abuser, because she had no-where else to go. The fact that we still need women's refuges is appalling. The fact that we have them at all is an ethical advance.
Again, in the Victorian era prostitution used to be understood as a choice driven by nymphomania coupled with moral degeneracy, not an economic necessity forced on poor girls and women. Women working in factories and mills weren't allowed any time off to nurse their babies, who at lunchtine were brought to them by their other children to be fed. The commonest operation at the Royal Free Children's Hospital in 1930 was breaking and re-setting the leg-bones of kids with rickets. This was both a technological and an ethical advance, set against a background of widespread pollution and malnutrition. But kids don't get rickets anymore in post-industrial countries, and that's a direct result of huge changes, enforced by the government since the 1950s, in how heat and power are generated. I look at photos of my home town in the 19th c. when it was the home of "King Cotton" and I wonder how anyone could have breathed that air for long. I was amongst the first generation of children to benefit from the clean air legislation.
But public health, including vaccinations, provision of sewers, provision of running water in homes, testing of air and water, cleaning of streets—all of these are not just technological advances. We have them not (just) because they can be done, but because people thought and still think they ought to be done. From John Snow to Jonas Salk and beyond, enough doctors and medical researchers have been driven by the desire to have people live longer, suffer less, and lead healthier lives.
The fact that we now have publicly-scrutinized, officially recognized medical qualifications, even if some doctors practise who shouldn't, is a massive advance on the time when even doctors who wanted to do good didn't know what the fuck they were doing and you had to choose on the basis of personal recommendations, anecdotes, and salesman's patter. The institutions that set up tests for who can practise and who can't are basing their decisions on the vast extension of medical and scientific knowledge since the 19th c. True, there are fraudulent and incompetent doctors. But the fact that we think we ought to have such standards at all is ultimately an ethical matter, not a technical one. We think we ought to be able control doctors' power over our bodies, not because we can (or can try to do so) but because we have accepted autonomy as an ethical ideal. And we think those ideals should be accepted by everyone, and many NGOs and even governments are trying to make that a reality. How is that not progress? It's progress to have people saying, that's wrong, and trying to do something about it, rather than thinking it's OK, it's God's will, it's unimportant, etc., or not even noticing it at all.
I could go on about how attitudes to war have changed since WW1, about the appearance of the legal ideas of crimes against humanity and of genocide after WW2, about the protections children in Europe enjoy in law, but this post is way too long already.