Public Policy and the separation of Eugenic Elimination has been a hot topic of discussion for many Eugenicists. Bentwitch, a Eugenicist herself, believes that public policy and eugenic elimination are inseparable. This Eugenicist states that employing a separation between them actually results in a more disputable moral stance, in which the concern about gender eugenics might be more open-ended than claimed. If these two were separated than policies about public health would have ignored values such as personal autonomy. In addition to these two remaining inseparable, the Israeli state-sponsored administrative procedure for Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) is very strict on who they allow undergoing PGD. They believe if too many individuals …show more content…
This article refers to the psychological issues an individual goes through when their screening comes back positive of their child carrying a deficient gene. NIPT private screenings are currently available in the UK, and it has been known that NIPT can lead to early abortion. However, many pregnant couples choose to risk an early abortion if the test can show any deformities their child might contain. NIPT can be used as an advanced early screening test for Down’s Syndrome around 10 weeks gestation, and individuals must decide if they want this test done. Before women undergo this specific type of screening, it is made known to them that there are no serious physical risks to themselves, but the baby may experience some harm. In addition, individuals need to consider the mental effects a positive test will cause. The effects include termination of the pregnancy, feelings of burden, and high levels of anxiety. NIPT causes unanticipated psychological consequences, and couples should know those consequences before going through with the screening. Psychological issues stay with a person for long periods of time, and each individual should thoroughly consider the effects of getting such an extensive screen
There can be many reasons as to why a woman might have an abortion. It may be due to an unwanted pregnancy in general, health issues with the mother that will cause her sickness throughout the pregnancy, ectopic pregnancy, and even awareness of a physical flaw with the child such as down syndrome. Prenatal testing has made it possible to determine whether or not a baby will have down syndrome during pregnancy, and research has shown that 92% of women who are aware of their child having a disability, abort their pregnancy. One statistic showed that from 2002 to 2010, 17,983 babies with disabilities were aborted in the UK. It is mentioned that many of these babies were compatible for life outside of the womb. This means that the baby could have survived, and abortion was not necessary.
The eugenics movement started in the early 1900s and was adopted by doctors and the general public during the 1920s. The movement aimed to create a better society through the monitoring of genetic traits through selective heredity. Over time, eugenics took on two different views. Supporters of positive eugenics believed in promoting childbearing by a class who was “genetically superior.” On the contrary, proponents of negative eugenics tried to monitor society’s flaws through the sterilization of the “inferior.”
The American Eugenics Movement was led by Charles Davenport and was a social agenda to breed out undesirable traits with an aim of racial purification. Eugenics was a used to breed out the worst and weakest to improve the genetic composition of the human race, and advocated for selective breeding to achieve this. The science of eugenics rested on simple mendelian genetics, which was a mistake because they were assuming complex behaviors could be reduced to simple mendelian genes. After Nazi Germany adopted the ideas behind the American eugenics movement to promote the Aryan race, the eugenics movement was completely discredited.
Neoeugenics is the idea of new, “neo”, eugenics or a new way of creating a healthier race. Eugenics was first defined in the late 1800s by a man named Sir Francis Galton who said that it was basically the study of traits that will cause an advantage or disadvantage in the traits of future generations. Eugenics soon turned from being about the use of artificial selection of breeding to create a stronger species, to being about the advancement of certain races over others. When talking about neo eugenics, it is believed that it may turn into something similar to that of eugenics in that the use of artificial selection would now be used to bring the upper class higher in standards of health and wellbeing as well as beauty. Others believe that the use of neo eugenics will help create a healthier, more stable species. Whether bad or good, the way that eugenics will advance will be in designer babies.
Galton, David J., and Clare J. Galton. "Francis Galton: And Eugenics Today." Journal of Medical Ethics, 24.2 (1998): 99-101. JSTOR. Web. 8 Mar. 2010.
Eugenics- Eugenics is a term coined by Francis Galton in 1883 and it is the belief and practice of improving the genetic quality of the human population. This idea that one could trace hereditary problems and find solutions for them gained significant ground in addressing certain societal issues such as poor people and welfare. Two types of eugenics emerged, positive and negative, but the U.S., negative eugenics was preferred. This is the idea of destroying defectives and degenerates from the population to promote and preserve the fittest, a very social Darwinist idea. This is important to sexuality because many homosexuals were sterilized, thus creating the stigma that homosexuality was a disease that could be cured.
“The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
The idea of eugenics was first introduced by Sir Francis Galton, who believed that the breeding of two wealthy and successful members of society would produce a child superior to that of two members of the lower class. This assumption was based on the idea that genes for success or particular excellence were present in our DNA, which is passed from parent to child. Despite the blatant lack of research, two men, Georges Vacher de Lapouge and Jon Alfred Mjoen, played to the white supremacists’ desires and claimed that white genes were inherently superior to other races, and with this base formed the first eugenics society. The American Eugenics Movement attempted to unethically obliterate the rising tide of lower classes by immorally mandating organized sterilization and race based experimentation.
The history of harmful eugenic practices, spurring from the Nazi implementations of discrimination towards biologically inferior people has given eugenics a negative stigma (1,Kitcher, 190). Genetic testing, as Kitcher sees it through a minimalistic perspective, should be restrained to aiding future children with extremely low qualities of life (2,Kitcher, 190). He believes that genetic engineering should only be used to avoid disease and illness serving the role of creating a healthier human race. He promotes laissez-faire eugenics, a “hands off” concept that corresponds to three components of eugenic practice, discrimination, coercion and division of traits. It holds the underlying works of genetic testing, accurate information, open access, and freedom of choice. Laissez-faire eugenics promises to enhance reproductive freedom preventing early child death due to genetic disease (3,Kitcher, 198). However there are dangers in Laissez-faire that Kitcher wants to avoid. The first is the historical tendency of population control, eugenics can go from avoiding suffering, to catering to a set of social values that will cause the practice of genetics to become prejudiced, insensitive and superficial. The second is that prenatal testing will become limited to the upper class, leaving the lower class with fewer options, creating biologically driven social barriers. Furthermore the decay of disability support systems due to prenatal testing can lead to an increased pressure to eliminate those unfit for society (4,Kitcher, 214).
In the 1920s, a company in New York started a movement known as “The Eugenics Movement.” The idea of eugenics was eventually picked up by Germany, China, Peru, India and Bangladesh. The movement is still in effect till this day; however, it is not as prevalent as it once was.
The eugenics movement originally started in the late 1870s because of the idea that inferior classes, criminals, poverty, feeble-minds, and disease were hereditary and reproducing would create an unfit population in the United States. Forced sterilizations and the introduction of birth control began with the demand to wipe out populations that were constructed as inferior. The early history of the birth control pill was a form of eugenics, and was not only oppressive towards women of color but to women across the United Sates.
And many stressed the need to protect the sanctity of motherhood and the chastity of white women; abortion, after all, supported the separation of sexual intercourse from reproduction. For many physicians and others, all of these concerns were generally more trenchant in the nineteenth century than the issue of fetal life. Solinger - 5 p.m. To further compound this, Solinger discusses the issue of eugenic laws and the sterilization of individuals who were deemed to be unsuitable for reproduction. These standards applied to women who were either poor, minorities, or women who had a disability (Solinger 2015). Solinger describes the use of “coercion” to get women who fall under these categories to be sterilized (Solinger, 2015).
The addition of a child into a family’s home is a happy occasion. Unfortunately, some families are unable to have a child due to unforeseen problems, and they must pursue other means than natural pregnancy. Some couples adopt and other couples follow a different path; they utilize in vitro fertilization or surrogate motherhood. The process is complicated, unreliable, but ultimately can give the parents the gift of a child they otherwise could not have had. At the same time, as the process becomes more and more advanced and scientists are able to predict the outcome of the technique, the choice of what child is born is placed in the hands of the parents. Instead of waiting to see if the child had the mother’s eyes, the father’s hair or Grandma’s heart problem, the parents and doctors can select the best eggs and the best sperm to create the perfect child. Many see the rise of in vitro fertilization as the second coming of the Eugenics movement of the 19th and early 20th century. A process that is able to bring joy to so many parents is also seen as deciding who is able to reproduce and what child is worthy of birthing.
Prenatal genetic testing has become one of the largest and most influencial advances in clinical genetics today. "Of the over 4000 genetic traits which have been distinguished to date, more than 300 are identifiable via prenatal genetic testing" (Morris, 1993). Every year, thousands of couples are subjecting their lives to the results of prenatal tests. For some, the information may be a sigh of relief, for others a tear of terror. The psychological effects following a prenatal test can be devastating, leaving the woman with a decision which will affect the rest of her life.
Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) was created to screen for disease, although more recently it is being used in choosing the sex of one’s child. PGD should be legal as long as the welfare of the participants remain a priority in regards to safety. I am not against the use of PGD to avoid health risks. A child should not be born to into this world without the opportunity to live a happy health life, free of ridicule, medications, pain and suffering.