When someone says that screening embryos for genetic diseases, giving educated women incentives to have children (like free child care for college educated women), or offering subsidized abortions for women addicted to drugs is “eugenics” they are absolutely using the term correctly.
The second example here seems wildly different from most of the rest of the examples in the article. A eugenic justification for free college child care involves people being rewarded monetarily by the government, not for their behaviour, but for their perceived genetic superiority.
I think this reveals a bit of my problem with the article: it gives the strawman impression that the only reason to be opposed to nazi eugenics was the coercion and murder. But there were other reasons too, like the state rewarding and punishing people based purely on their unchangeable genetics and not on their actions, the view of disabled people as burdens on society, the obsession with racial differences, etc. If a policy resembles these negative effects, I think a (calm, reasoned) comparison to historical negative eugenics is warranted in the discussion.
The second example here seems wildly different from most of the rest of the examples in the article. A eugenic justification for free college child care involves people being rewarded monetarily by the government, not for their behaviour, but for their perceived genetic superiority.
I think this reveals a bit of my problem with the article: it gives the strawman impression that the only reason to be opposed to nazi eugenics was the coercion and murder. But there were other reasons too, like the state rewarding and punishing people based purely on their unchangeable genetics and not on their actions, the view of disabled people as burdens on society, the obsession with racial differences, etc. If a policy resembles these negative effects, I think a (calm, reasoned) comparison to historical negative eugenics is warranted in the discussion.