While the word "eugenics" itself rightfully carries the connotation of scientific racism, I felt like saying "artificial genetic selection" might be too passive voice for the title, so try to drop any preconceived connotations of the word itself for the sake of argument.
Now on to the point. I have been diagnosed with a few psychiatric disorders in the past, and they affect my life quite adversely. Both my parents and some of my grandparents also have these conditions, which leads me to believe that the cause may be genetic (while I cant say this for certain, for the sake of argument assume it is), and for that reason I feel as though it would be immoral for me to have children or run the risk of them being adversely affected as well. Is this problematic? I wouldn't hold this belief if I thought it was, but am curious what you think.
Next level up from that would be to tell this to other people, such as a doctor recommending a patient with a severe generic disorder not to reproduce because of the high likelihood of passing on aforementioned disorder. Not enforcing this in any way, the patient is still free to do what they choose with this information. This I could see as problematic because a malicious doctor could selectively choose when to disclose or be overzealous in what qualifies as severe for fascist reasons, but with proper oversight this could maybe be minimized.
After that would be enforcement of the above, with legal consequences for those who violate a doctors order to refrain from reproducing, this is definitely too far in my book because of the potential for abuse as mentioned above, as well as also creating an incentive for people who believe themselves to have genetic disorders not to seek treatment
At the end of this chain of thought, would be eugenics as it is typically perceived, state enforcement of artificial selection by race. This is fascist, I can definitively say that this is well past the point of being reasonable.
In addition to that chain of thought, how does genetic engineering with things like CRISPR gene editing or IVF embryo selection fit in? People with inheritable genetic disorders could theoretically have children with no risk of it passing on (I dont think the technology has yet reached this level, but for the sake of argument assume it will), but then we run into the issue of what modifications are and are not ethical. I think it would be alright to use it to prevent severe disorders, but what if you could do more than that? What about preventing bad eyesight or choosing the biological sex of the child? The same line of thought of increased enforcement from before could also be applied to this, as while as the potential of it being abused for fascist reasons.
Been thinking about this stuff a bit because of my own circumstances and was wondering what your takes would be on this.
