An Unconvincing Analogy

One of Ezra Klein's commenters, on what I'll call, for the sake of tabling the argument, Gattacagenics* rather than eugenics:

the essence of Douthat's argument is that progressives are in favor of access to abortion, and abortion can be used for eugenic purposes, therefore progressives are in favor of eugenics. This is ridiculous for reasons that have nothing to do with the motives behind particular abortions. It's like saying that if you oppose banning guns, you're in favor of bank robbery, hunting bunny rabbits, and suicide.

No. It's like saying "if you oppose banning guns, and you also oppose any efforts to prevent bank robberies, then you effectively support the spread of bank robberies." Which I think is a reasonable way of looking at it. Or more accurately still (because a gun and an abortion aren't the same kind of thing at all), it's like saying "if you believe in an unfettered right to theft, then you effectively support the spread of bank robberies." In the case of Gattaccagenics, that's where the logic of Roe-style reproductive rights will carry progressives, I predict - to open-ended opposition to any attempt to restrict genetically-selective abortion and (eventually) genetic engineering in utero, whether it's intended to eliminate Down's Syndrome today, or autism tomorrow, or homosexuality or a predisposition to cancer or what-have-you the day after that.

But look, this much Ezra and others have right: What you think about Gattaccagenics is going to be deeply influenced by what you think about the morality of abortion. Yes, there are plenty of pro-choice, anti-Gattaccagenic voices out there, from Michael Sandel to (surprisingly) Leon Kass. But the more you accept pro-choice premises, the more likely you are to share the point of view expressed by the other commenter Ezra quotes - namely, that aborting fetuses with genetic abnormalities is no different than two people at risk of passing on a genetic disorder to their offspring choosing not to procreate in the first place.

*You may notice that Gattacca's Wikipedia page describes the movie as a "vision of a society driven by new eugenics," even though there is no state coercion of reproduction or forced sterilizations of minority groups depicted in the film. I hope Ezra or Kevin Drum will move quickly to correct this egregious Godwin's Law violation, which was doubtless planted by the same "bright boy or girl in the conservative movement" who whispered the term "eugenics" in my ear in the first place.

Comments

I guess it still hasn't gotten through yet that Down's syndrome is not generally heritable, and hence has even LESS to do with any rationale about "improving" gene pool.

But Tay Sachs is heritable.

So be consistent. Call those parents that choose to abort babies that have Tay-Sachs eugenicists. And while you're at it, those parents that abort fetuses with other non-heritable birth defects, like ancephaly.

And then step back and start acting like an intellectual, instead of someone who smirkingly tries to work via buzzwords that they know full well have much wider connotations than they can actually defend. Get back to making arguments rather than playing with labels.

Posted by plunge | August 1, 2007 1:02 AM

Well done, Ross. Ignore the haters.

Posted by John | August 1, 2007 1:07 AM

So be consistent. Call those parents that choose to abort babies that have Tay-Sachs eugenicists. And while you're at it, those parents that abort fetuses with other non-heritable birth defects, like ancephaly.

as noted by others, aborting a baby who is going to develop tay sachs has no affect on the allele frequencies. TS suffers won't survive to reproduction. as noted by others aborting heterozygotes, carriers, would have an affect on allele frequencies. in fact, the hasidic community's discouragement of marriages between tay sach's carriers may be anti-eugenic in the "technical sense," as it is preventing selection from reducing the frequency of the TS allele. this means that the 'genetic load' is increasing.

i know none of you really care about this ;-) but i thought i would get that in before the comments go off about abortion again.

Posted by razib | August 1, 2007 2:24 AM

also, a few minor points before the political discussion gets going

1) a lot of people keep talking about how genetics disproves eugenics. perhaps. but r.a. fisher, the father of evolutionary genetics (who fused darwinian evolution with mendelian genetics) was a eugenicist. so was w.d. hamilton, one of the greatest evolutionary biologists of the second half of the 20th century. there are nuances in their beliefs, e.g., hamilton disavowed planned eugenics in his later work. but to say that biologists reject eugenical thinking because of the science seems false to me. this is why richard dawkins, a mainstream evolutionary biologist, can talk about eugenics.

2) there is a diff. between positive eugenics, and negative eugenics. fisher tended to promote the former, which involved promoting the fertility of the "higher orders." obviously the history of state sanctioned sterilization was associated closely with negative eugenics. however you want to define 'eugenics,' do please note this classic distinction.

3) there are many people who suggest that eugenics involves state intervention and mass planning, while the current fad in genetic technology is a "bottom up" affair. i would note that this might make a different in terms of the political context, it doesn't matter for the science, the evolution. the standard model of evolution posits selection upon individuals resulting in mass action and change in mean alleles frequencies. the sum of a million small actions can be quite large. i understand that politically people make a big distinction between gov. sanctioned eugenics and personal genomic choice, but, the fact that we know and comprehend the genetic substrate with much greater physical precision is going to make the 'new eugenics' far more powerful than the old eugenics every was, coerced or not.

Posted by razib | August 1, 2007 2:38 AM

I think the term for the brave new world we're increasingly in is "free market eugenics." For example, the market price for high IQ Ivy League coeds' eggs is a lot more than the market price for community college coeds' eggs. Similarly, Denmark is a big exporter of frozen sperm today because of global market demand for blond genes.

Will this turn out well for the human race? I don't think we have a clue at present: political correctness makes us dumber (e.g., Kevin Drum's postings) than we need to be to deal with this challenge. To estimate the future impact of engineered genetic diversity on society, we need to be allowed to publicly discuss the current impact of natural genetic diversity on society, but we aren't.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 1, 2007 2:55 AM

But Tay Sachs is heritable

btw, the term heritable is usually used for quantitative traits, not mendelian genetic ones. a last nerd gasp...sorry. e.g., height or IQ is heritable.

Posted by razib | August 1, 2007 2:56 AM

...to open-ended opposition to any attempt to restrict genetically-selective abortion and (eventually) genetic engineering in utero, whether it's intended to eliminate Down's Syndrome today, or autism tomorrow, or homosexuality or a predisposition to cancer or what-have-you the day after that.

It's difficult to have this discussion without addressing the underlying concern ("is abortion murder or not?"), but this gets closer. I wonder: what is the basis for being against in utero genetic engineering in all cases?

If you were told that your child would be born with spina bifida, but that it could be prevented by genetic engineering (that is, the child would be born normal), would it be wrong to do so? Why?

Labelling the decision to abort the same fetus as "eugenics" (or whatever word) is still missing the mark; the decision is more likely rooted in the immediate costs to the prospective parents (financially and emotionally) of raising that child, not in any desire for a better race.

So, the argument left (if motive is excluded) is simply that the collective likelihood of doing this becomes eugenics. That is, even if you are not doing it to improve the gene pool, if everyone did this the result might be an improvement, and therefore you are engaging in eugenics somehow.

That, though, stretches the definition of eugenics past any reasonable breaking point: searching for a fit, healthy, attractive and intelligent mate is also "eugenics," as would be ruling out a partner for reasons of Tay-Sachs likelihood (the example du jour).

You are correct, though: if you do not see "abortion as murder" as a premise, aborting that fetus is no more eugenics than ruling out a partner for Tay-Sachs. That, of course, was the whole point; linking abortion to eugenics is pretty specious, unless you are using a ridiculously expansive idea of the word.

Posted by Brad L | August 1, 2007 3:18 AM

"That, though, stretches the definition of eugenics past any reasonable breaking point ..."

No, that hardly stretches the definition of "eugenics" beyond what the inventor of the term eugenics, Francis Galton, advocated.

When a lesbian feminist like Jody Foster spends months searching out the perfect sperm donor -- a tall handsome scientist with a 160 IQ according to the British press -- that's eugenics in the Galtonian sense. The Dor Yeshorim program, organized by a rabbi who lost four children to Tay-Sachs, which discourages marriages between Jews who are heterozygous for the disease is eugenics in the Galtonian sense.

Darwin partly got the idea for natural selection from the artificial selection being practiced for millennia by animal breeders, and his half-cousin Galton (they were grandsons of the near-genius Erasmus Darwin) just turned it around and proposed encouraging marriages among people with traits believed to benefit society. Most societies in human history have engaged in something like that so there was nothing terribly radical about Galton's suggestion, but it was going hopelessly against the general trend in northwest Europe for love matches rather than arranged marriages.

Galton, a kindly man of liberal views, was shocked at a 1904 conference to hear how far the new generation of socialist eugenicists, led by H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, were prepared to go to take eugenics in a negative direction by advocating sterilization, or worse, of the "unfit." Eugenics was most popular among WASPy progressives, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Teddy Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, and Winston Churchill (during his Liberal phase). It tended to appeal to outdoorsy intellectuals who spent a lot of time around country people who bred horses and dogs.

Quite a few Jews were supporters of eugenics before WWII, as a recent article from Ha'aretz shows, but with so many not-so-hot Big Ideas to choose from back then, Jewish intellectuals tended to obsess more over their own homegrown Big Ideas like Marxism and Freudianism rather than enthuse over the horsey set's obsession with breeding.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 1, 2007 3:40 AM

A classic example of free market eugenics that originated in an attempt to improve the human race is the freedom women now have to choose their sperm donors. David Plotz, the Acting Editor of Slate, wrote in his 2005 book about Robert Graham, the founder of "Nobel Prize Winner Sperm Bank:"

"Robert Graham strolled into the world of dictatorial doctors and cowed patients and accidentally launched a revolution…All he wanted to do was propagate genius. But he knew that his grand experiment would flop unless women wanted to shop with him… So Graham did what no one in the business had ever done: he marketed his men…

“His Repository catalog was very spare … but it thrilled his customers. Women who saw it realized, for the first time, that they had a genuine choice… Thanks to its attentiveness to consumers, the Repository upended the hierarchy of the fertility industry. Before the Repository, fertility doctors had ordered, women had accepted… Mother after mother said the same thing to me: she had picked the Repository because it was the only place that let her select what she wanted.

“Where Graham went, other sperm banks -- and the rest of the fertility industry—followed… All sperm banks have become eugenic sperm banks.”

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 1, 2007 3:46 AM

No, that hardly stretches the definition of "eugenics" beyond what the inventor of the term eugenics, Francis Galton, advocated.

The Dor Yeshorim program, organized by a rabbi who lost four children to Tay-Sachs, which discourages marriages between Jews who are heterozygous for the disease is eugenics in the Galtonian sense.

Ok, but this then becomes a semantic argument, not a substantial one, unless you think that Ross and most others are using "eugenics" in the mate-choosing/Tay-Sachs avoiding way that you are suggesting.

I don't; I think they are leaning on the nastier connotations of the word. If Padma Lakshmi, the soon to be ex-Salman Rushdie, chose her mate for his noted intelligence, this too would be eugenics by your standard (and is actually quite close to the Jody Foster example), but I doubt this is what is meant to be called to mind here.

To that extent, you can win the semantic battle, but Ross still loses his more substantive point, which is that this would be anything more reprehensible than eliminating a partner for reasons of T-S incompatibility, or frankly because they are stupid and ugly.

[Of course, hanging on to an "innocent" definition when the word has gained so many negative connotations strikes me as spitting in the wind; you might as well curse people for using the word nauseous instead of nauseated.]

Posted by Brad L | August 1, 2007 3:59 AM

me: "That, though, stretches the definition of eugenics past any reasonable breaking point ..."

No, that hardly stretches the definition of "eugenics" beyond what the inventor of the term eugenics, Francis Galton, advocated.

It's late, so this got by me a bit: my paragraph preceding the part that you quote was this:

So, the argument left (if motive is excluded) is simply that the collective likelihood of doing this becomes eugenics. That is, even if you are not doing it to improve the gene pool, if everyone did this the result might be an improvement, and therefore you are engaging in eugenics somehow.

So, does that mean you are endorsing the idea that any collective action that results in an improvement in genetic quality is "eugenics," regardless of motive?

I was under the impression that motive (not outcome) was actually part of the definition, even in the most forgiving of definitions -- that is, for an action to be considered eugenics, it has to be an attempt to make a better gene pool.

Otherwise, you end up saying things like "clinically depressed people who commit suicide as teens are simply practicing eugenics." (Yes, this assumes a tendency towards depression is genetic.) By the Ross definition (which substitutes effect for motive), they are.

Posted by Brad L | August 1, 2007 4:20 AM

"Of course, hanging on to an "innocent" definition when the word has gained so many negative connotations strikes me as spitting in the wind;"

That's what this debate is about, of course: liberals want to continue to rewrite history for propaganda purposes by redefining "eugenics" as whatever serves their partisan purposes.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 1, 2007 4:21 AM

That's what this debate is about, of course: liberals want to continue to rewrite history for propaganda purposes by redefining "eugenics" as whatever serves their partisan purposes.

Gee, you saw through me there. No, I wasn't trying to point out that I don't think Ross meant what you mean by eugenics, a term that he brought up, that he referred to as "the genetic improvement of the human species through the scientific management of the reproductive process," a definition that removes motive and emphasizes outcome. (Thanks for setting me straight, though, that this is in fact the exact definition you had in mind.)

Couldn't be that he already also made the direct connection between the word and its obvious negative associations. Nope.

Must be me trying to re-write history (right here in the comments of a blog, where they will be admired by all!), by noting that words come with connotations and baggage, to extend my clear partisan purpose.

Posted by Brad L | August 1, 2007 4:41 AM

The reason that Kevin Drum and Ezra Klein are so representatively ignorant on this topic (which at least Ezra had the good grace to admit) is that "eugenics" has been equated simply to "Hitler," so no thinking about the topic is allowed. The reductio ad Hitlerum drives out all thought.

So, when somebody like Ross points out that eugenics is back, in a new but related form, enormous umbrage is instantly taken: Ezra said, in italics, it was "very unfair" to point this out. One of Klein's commenters made his point more artlessly: "This is insane. You call someone a eugenicist, you're calling them a Nazi-lover."

Obviously, this is destructive of intelligent thought.

In reality, eugenic advocacy existed before Nazism, and Catholic objections to eugenics, a tradition Ross is continuing, existed before Nazism, too, as in G.K. Chesterton's 1922 book "Eugenics and Other Evils."

But all that has been thrown down the memory hole in order to redefine "eugenics" for partisan propaganda purposes.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 1, 2007 5:25 AM

when somebody like Ross points out that eugenics is back

Actually, he is arguing that eugenics is back. I'd disagree with him, for reasons mentioned above. I also happen to think that, even in proper (non-slanderous) debate, you and he were not using the term synonymously, and that there are substantive implications to that. Definitions matter.

But I also think it is disingenous to claim to use the word in a way that is completely ignorant of its associations. I don't think people associate eugenics with Hitler because of people like Ezra and Drum. I think they associate eugenics with Hitler because of the fact that eugenics was a stated aim of Naziism.

Pretending that the association doesn't exist, so that one can use the power of that label against those that have a different viewpoint, seems disingenuous to me, particularly when the case in point seems to veer away from the classical definition of eugenics as well as the perjorative one.

Saying "oh, well, I don't mean what eugenics implies, I only mean the classic definition from pre-WWII" doesn't really remove the associative stain. This is a bit like saying "when I called you a commie, I meant you evinced similarities to Marxist writings, not that you are in any way supportive of the oppressive and murderous regimes of Stalin or Mao." (Although at least Marx is far, far more well known than Galton, so the air of pretense might be a little stronger).

But all that has been thrown down the memory hole in order to redefine "eugenics" for partisan propaganda purposes.

I don't find it surprising that WWII, and Naziism, are more salient to most people than the 19th Century writings of Francis Galton. I don't think there is any great propaganda trick to this - the association is just stronger, because the real-world impact was so great. Nothing was "thrown down" a memory hole. It was lost their naturally, misplaced next to discussions of Lamarck.

BTW: I've been around the bloggy parts long enough to know that when people are upset with your writings, the first thing they tend to do is ascribe to you an unpleasant motive. When, exactly, did it seem like a winning proposition to you to skip the substantial thrust of the argument and run headlong into a discussion of the writers' motivations with barely a backwards glance?

Posted by Brad L | August 1, 2007 5:56 AM

...so no thinking about the topic is allowed. The reductio ad Hitlerum drives out all thought.

I disagree with this, as well. There is plenty of discussion about the ethics of abortion, in regards to genetic birth defects. There is also growing discussion of genetic engineering, mostly under that label, or the label of bio-engineering. There will be plenty more to come, have no fear.

These topics exist and are fairly easy to find (heck, there was a whole thread on the very topic of abortion/birth defects in, of all places, The WaPo's online humor discussion run by Gene Weingarten, a few weeks ago.)

The reason it is not called "eugenics" is not because the substance of these topics is verboten (they are difficult, to be sure, but not out of the realm of civil discourse); it is because "eugenics" speaks to a goal of a better gene pool, and that is not the express goal of the individuals taking the actions described.

While individual choices, such as T-S screening or not carrying a fetus with severe genetic defects to term, (or depressed teens committing suicide) may have some kind of "gene-positive" outcome, I seriously doubt that "a better gene pool" is a motivating factor for any of them; rather, the desire not to have such a child (and all the associated costs) is the primary and probably only deciding factor. And, discussions of the morality of this are usually framed in this way.

Put another way, if a couple that were both T-S carriers could be told, with metaphysical assurance, that their child would not have T-S, they would probably have the kid. The effect on the gene pool would likely be irrelevant to them.

Posted by Brad L | August 1, 2007 6:12 AM

The idea that there are millions of people aborting babies because they have low IQs is fantasy--hence the "Gattaca" refernce.

And it's a particular kind of fantasy the anti-abortion movement likes. It's akin to those bumper stickers that say "my mother chose life." The level of insecurity in those bumper stickers!--that the person felt marginal, on the cusp, that at any moment mom could have made a different choice and maybe mom kinda wished she had. That line of reasoning always casts liberals as know-it-all smarty-pants' who think they're better than me because, one supposes, their parents loved them and the choice of their birth wasn't such a near thing.

There is no doubt that there will be many ethical problems posed by increased knowledge of the baby in the womb. There will be people who want to abort babies with "undersirable" traits. It'll be creepy. The argument "it's my body" will, regrettably, still apply.

But calling eugenics abortion is like saying that buying a house in the 9th ward of New Orleans is the same as buying a McMansion in Loudon county VA. They're the same act in a legal sense, but all the meaning that matters lies in the real economic and cultural circumstances which drive the choice. You have to be willfully blind to call those two acts "the same."

Posted by h.c. carey | August 1, 2007 7:30 AM

Swastikas long preceded Naziism. So what's the big deal? I just said that Ross should put a swastika atop his website to show his sympathy with the Nazis' views on gays. I don't understand why everyone got all mad.

Posted by Ron Mexico | August 1, 2007 7:35 AM

even though there is no state coercion of reproduction or forced sterilizations of minority groups depicted in the film.

No. There is, however, state sanctioned oppression and exclusion of those who's genes have not been manipulated and selectively engineered. And the operative point is, no liberal (or, fine, progressive) is advocating anything like that.

Posted by Freddie | August 1, 2007 7:49 AM

Fun reading. I think Brad L is kicking Sailer's butt so far.

Posted by LaurenceB | August 1, 2007 8:25 AM

What Brad L. said. Seriously, as I said in the last post on eugenics post before this one, raising a developmentally disabled child is expensive, exhausting, and ends only with the death of the child or parent. If I can avoid that for my self and my child, I would do so. Would you please explain why you thing failing to avoid misery is a good thing?

Yes, I know that there are many parents of mentally disabled children who write of their pleasure in raising their children. They are always affluent and educated people who are in a position to obtain the rare and expensive services, including things like frequent maid service or home health aides, necessary to make such care less overwhelming that it would otherwise be. For those of us who don't have trust funds, the choice is generally to quit our jobs and doing all the work ourselves with no money and often no health insurance, and at the same time sacrificing the dreams and plans of any other normal kids we have.

Posted by Karen | August 1, 2007 8:28 AM

Actually, it's more like, 'if you think there's a right to gun ownership, you support bank robbery.'

Again, your argument seems to be that abortion and eugenics are identical, which is a pretty obvious fallacy.

Posted by dan | August 1, 2007 9:06 AM

If Padma Lakshmi, the soon to be ex-Salman Rushdie, chose her mate for his noted intelligence, this too would be eugenics by your standard (and is actually quite close to the Jody Foster example), but I doubt this is what is meant to be called to mind here.

No, it wouldn't, and it's actually quite far from the Jody Foster example. I chose my wife in part because of her intelligence and beauty, but the possibility that we'd be likely have smart, good-looking kids was frankly the farthest thing from my mind. If Lakshmi jumped in bed with Rushdie in order to get herself knocked up with some high-IQ sperm, then yes, you'd have a point.

Does no-one see the possibility that a widespread tendency to abort, say, babies with Downs Syndrome or other similar conditions could have pretty seriously problematic social effects on the way retarded and disabled persons are looked at in our society? (Their lives are "expensive, exhausting, and ends only with ... death" - hey, sounds like my life!) A while ago there was an excellent op-ed in the Dallas Morning News that talked about this: link.

Posted by Jhn | August 1, 2007 9:13 AM

Unfortunately, a substantive debate has become entangled with a semantic debate.

We are learning more about the genetic qualities of fetuses. Without regulation, that information is going to be used by parents. It seems likely that the social acceptability of the practice will gradually become greater, and the kinds of "conditions" for which it is a reasonable option will become broader. That just is going to be a big force changing our genetics.

Already in Canada, sex selection in abortion is making statistically detectable demographic changes. The healthcare profession is witholding information about the fetus's sex -- something in tension with pateint autonomy, and probably not possible in a market system.

Technological breakthroughs may make it possible to make direct alterations to the germ line.

These developments don't really raise problems for libertarians: whatever parental autonomy dictates is good. Rhetoric about choice is a perfect fit. For the left, it is going to pose a dilemma. The groups that are going to disappear are the socially marginalized.

Whether you call this "eugenics" is a lot less important than starting to think about it.

Posted by Pithlord | August 1, 2007 9:43 AM

I don't think people associate eugenics with Hitler because of people like Ezra and Drum. I think they associate eugenics with Hitler because of the fact that eugenics was a stated aim of Naziism.

But if we agreed to exclusively identify eugenics with Naziism, we'd be ratifying historical ignorance. Eugenics really was closely associated with progressivism and socialism in the first half of the twentieth century. All kinds of American states and Canadian provinces had eugenic statutes.

It would be a bit like claiming that tying southern conservatives to racial segregation is unfair because people associate that with South Africa.

Posted by Pithlord | August 1, 2007 9:52 AM

Re: " Whether you call this "eugenics" is a lot less important than starting to think about it. "

I agree. The semantic debate is not that interesting. What amazes me is that some of the people who cry out against political correctness, arguing that eugenics is an appropriate word to use now, are the same ones who use its association with Hitler to imply how dastardly it is.

Posted by Jim W | August 1, 2007 9:56 AM

One funny detail - as far as I can tell, Douthat actually wasn't one of the crew comparing modern progressives to eugenicists. Kevin Drum said, incorrectly, that Douthat was, and Douthat got sucked in after that.

Douthat actually doesn't have any posts prior to July 30 using the word "eugenic", except for this May 17 post in which he argues that abortion is offensive not because another blogger thought it could be compared to Nazi-style eugenics, but because it was objectionable on its own terms.

When Drum wrote that " Glenn Beck, Yuval Levin, and Ross Douthat didn't come up with this stuff themselves", he only linked to Beck talking about eugenics. In fact, the Douthat post that started the whole thing didn't say anything about eugenics, it only argued that historically, the progressive movement was "dangerously utopian" and that Ross was " not so sure that it's a coincidence that the revival of progressivism as a political label has coincided with a more strident secularism/atheism, a greater obsession with the supposed right-wing threat to "science" (read: left-wing policy preferences on stem cell research, cloning, genetic engineering, etc.), and a greater sympathy for Darwinism-as-a-universal-theory among thinkers associated with the political left."

I think that Ross's original post uses a little broad a brush, but it really didn't call y'all eugenicists. (Of course, when Drum said that Ross did, Ross took the bait.)

Posted by J Mann | August 1, 2007 10:02 AM

Clean-up, we got some Sailer in aisle two!

Posted by hmm | August 1, 2007 10:05 AM

I think all of the energy we've put into talking about what is and isn't eugenics has been a waste of time, a purely semantic debate.

What Ross is not addressing is that the right to abortion is predicated on the recognition of women's personal autonomy, including the autonomy to decide for themselves the moral questions through which the anti-abortion crowd sees the issue. The pro-choice position does not hold that a fetus is not a human being, but rather takes no stance on the issue, recognizing that the moral, metaphysical, and spiritual questions involved are essentially ill-suited to public debate and therefore to the coercive power of the state.

Thinking of the right to abortion as analagous to the right to bear arms is misleading. In America we all have the "right" to act selfishly, betray our friends, and shirk our responsibilities, but we hardly think of these as "rights" because they are so fundamental to our autonomous humanity. If we do not oppose making laws controlling every aspect of our moral lives, it does not mean that we support every possible moral decision.

Abortion is in this category--a manifestation of personal autonomy so basic that it ought not to require a separate, explicit "right" at all. If you accept that pregnant women are autonomous human beings you must accept that they can have abortions, even if you do not approve of every possible reason for an abortion.

I count myself on the pro-choice but "anti-Gattagenics" in this debate, but the commoditization of human life, which is real and troubling, is jusr not relevant to the question of whether it is morally acceptable to ban abortion. The argument for the right to abortion is not invalidated by an argument against eugenics.

Posted by BP | August 1, 2007 11:14 AM

Let's compare "eugenicism" to "egalitarianism."

Egalitarianism was a stated aim of many 20th Century political movements, three of which carried out mass murder in the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia.

Eugenicism was a stated aim of many early 20th Century political movements, one of which carried out mass murder in Germany.

Now, by this quick and dirty comparison, egalitarianism should be three times the curse word that eugenicism is.

Indeed, it's easy to imagine an analogous alternate universe where the Soviet Union lost WWII, and hence where all egalitarians around the world were permanently tarred with some vague form of responsibility for the Gulag. Today, the Right would routinely smear its opponents as egalitarians, and would, in turn, get extremely huffy when any of its opponents mentioned that there were egalitarian implications in the favorite policies of the Right, such as immigration restriction. "How dare you say that I favor border control because I want a more egalitarian wage distribution among Americans. Don't you know that calling somebody an egalitarian is tantamount to calling them a Stalinist? yada yada..."

Fortunately, for the good of clear thinking, "egalitarianism" remains a reasonably usable and thus useful word. We're still allowed to use "egalitarianism" without instantly assuming that it automatically leads to the Killing Fields. But, we're also allowed to point out that egalitarianism sometimes did lead to the Killing Fields. And we're allowed to discuss modern types of egalitarianism that don't involve socializing the means of production or collectivizing the farms but still call them egalitarian.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 1, 2007 4:05 PM

I'm glad that Steve Sailer appears to acknowledge that mass murder was a feature of three communists states, not every communist state. I would agree with him there. (To be fair, he might also have added Ethiopia and Albania to his list).

That said, the obvious flaw in his arguments is that egalitarianism is a positive good, in and of itself, and not a means to any other end. Eugenics is very different, being wrong in principle (and even if I'm wrong about that, it's at best only an unpleasant and necessary evil, certainly not anything good in and of itself). It seems reasonable that we should be much more critical of the record of eugenicists than of the egalitarians. Mass murder was not a feature of every communist state, nor every socialist state, and certainly not every egalitarian state (of course they may have had plenty of other flaws from a conservative perspective). Eugenics is by contrast inherently wrong, even if it doesn't lead to mass murder.

I don't think that clear thinking about eugenics is helped by comparing them to Nazis, in fact I don't think that comparing them to Nazis is helpful, except when they explicitly invoke eugenics along racial grounds (which as far as I know, no influential forces in the U.S. today do). I think that eugenics is, in general, a bad idea and should be criticized for that reason, not because it was or was not endorsed by the Nazis.

Posted by Hector Dauphin-Gloire | August 1, 2007 10:26 PM