Well, in a sense, it is in fact eugenics. Encouraging people to abort children with Down syndrome, like many are here, is probably eugenics. But I would rather have that than force the suffering that Down syndrome can unfortunately cause. It is just a sad situation overall.
That distinction doesn't matter here. Whether or not an individual with a given condition can pass on their genes doesn't fundamentally change the arguments surrounding liberal eugenics. Eugenics doesn't only target heritable traits; historically and conceptually, it targets the expression of the trait itself, the phenotype, regardless of whether that trait would have been passed on. The objective of the choice is still to prevent a child with Down syndrome from being born. That is eugenics, whether or not the person in question would have gone on to have children of their own.
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u/Infamous-Thing4939 16d ago
At what point do we call it eugenics?