Re the reversal test, I’d be in favour of organizations that generally helped people become more fertile, if they wanted to be? I don’t want people with mental illness to have more children per se—I want them to have the amount of children they want to have.
I think in the case of Project Prevention, the question is muddied in several ways. If a person has lots of children but can’t or doesn’t take care of them, I agree that’s a problem, but it’s not really a eugenics issue (it would also be a problem if they had no mental illness and were just negligent). Conversely, if a drug addict had a lot of children but did take care of them, that’s not obviously an issue to me. And based on the wikipedia page, Project Prevention seems like a good example for why people are concerned about the reclamation of “eugenics”. The founder is quoted as saying “We don’t allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children”. This is incredibly dehumanizing language and doesn’t give me confidence that this person has drug addicts’ interests at heart! Her reply to criticism about this was that she cared about the children. But to me, the fact that the children may not have a stable home or reliable parent figure seems more important than their genetics.
I’d be in favour of polygenic screening for people with heritable conditions, as this really does seem to enhance parental choice and it comes from a place of compassion rather than stigma.
Re the reversal test, I’d be in favour of organizations that generally helped people become more fertile, if they wanted to be? I don’t want people with mental illness to have more children per se—I want them to have the amount of children they want to have.
I think in the case of Project Prevention, the question is muddied in several ways. If a person has lots of children but can’t or doesn’t take care of them, I agree that’s a problem, but it’s not really a eugenics issue (it would also be a problem if they had no mental illness and were just negligent). Conversely, if a drug addict had a lot of children but did take care of them, that’s not obviously an issue to me. And based on the wikipedia page, Project Prevention seems like a good example for why people are concerned about the reclamation of “eugenics”. The founder is quoted as saying “We don’t allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children”. This is incredibly dehumanizing language and doesn’t give me confidence that this person has drug addicts’ interests at heart! Her reply to criticism about this was that she cared about the children. But to me, the fact that the children may not have a stable home or reliable parent figure seems more important than their genetics.
I’d be in favour of polygenic screening for people with heritable conditions, as this really does seem to enhance parental choice and it comes from a place of compassion rather than stigma.