Let’s apply the reversal test to your assertion that you’d be “against even mild “eugenicist” interventions aimed at making mentally ill people have fewer children”. Would you be in favor of an organization that gave drugs to people with mental illness that made them more fertile?
All I’m endorsing in this essay is that interventions should be discussed, not any particular intervention. Personally, I would also be against the government intervening in the reproduction of people who want to have children. At the moment, someone with serious mental illness can have multiple children in foster care, have no desire to have children and still, as an accident of sex, have children they cannot care for who, moreover, are more likely to have inherited their problems. This is the basic idea behind Project Prevention- $300 is likely enough of a nudge that it incentivizes someone to take contraception who already does not want children. $300 is unlikely to convince someone who wants to have a child not to. Moreover, most PP clients choose reversible contraception.
There are countries that subsidize IVF. In the near future it could be possible for the government to subsidize polygenic screening for people with heritable conditions who do not want to pass these conditions down to their children. As I know many people with mental illness who choose not to have children because they don’t want their kids to share their misfortune, this could be an intervention that would help mentally ill people who want to have children have (more) children.
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.
Let’s apply the reversal test to your assertion that you’d be “against even mild “eugenicist” interventions aimed at making mentally ill people have fewer children”. Would you be in favor of an organization that gave drugs to people with mental illness that made them more fertile?
All I’m endorsing in this essay is that interventions should be discussed, not any particular intervention. Personally, I would also be against the government intervening in the reproduction of people who want to have children. At the moment, someone with serious mental illness can have multiple children in foster care, have no desire to have children and still, as an accident of sex, have children they cannot care for who, moreover, are more likely to have inherited their problems. This is the basic idea behind Project Prevention- $300 is likely enough of a nudge that it incentivizes someone to take contraception who already does not want children. $300 is unlikely to convince someone who wants to have a child not to. Moreover, most PP clients choose reversible contraception.
There are countries that subsidize IVF. In the near future it could be possible for the government to subsidize polygenic screening for people with heritable conditions who do not want to pass these conditions down to their children. As I know many people with mental illness who choose not to have children because they don’t want their kids to share their misfortune, this could be an intervention that would help mentally ill people who want to have children have (more) children.
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.