Inspired by this thread.
Eugenics has a negative connotation but should it?
Selective breeding cerainly occurs in most countries. At the least most countries have laws against marriage between siblings in part because of concerns over recessive traits.
Is it unethical to suggest that we reduce the feertility of some groups and increase the fertility of other groups?
YES
I think a strict utilitarian view would be that the benefits to future generations (by wiping out many genetic problems) would outweigh the issues it creates today in civil liberties. However, I don’t hear many people who support that kind of utilitarianism.
It’s such a basic violation of our innate sense of right and wrong.
If the inspiring thread (charity paying crack addicts to sterilize) fits the definition of above, then no.
WHY?
Fuck yes.
“Selective breeding” is probably not the right term. All breeding that is not forced or arranged is going to be selected. To be eugenics it needs to have an overarching genetic goal. And laws against interfamilial marriage (in addition to being arguably too restrictive) are not eugenics either as far as I can tell.
I wouldn’t say that espousing the point of view is unethical. I’d prefer a word like wrongheaded or disgusting. Putting it into practice would be unethical in addition to those other things.
No.
There’s a monster difference between a private charity offering people the chance to be sterilized and the government deciding who is fit to breed and who isn’t. Governments don’t have a good track record in that realm, where ever they are from. I’m not willing to hand over that kind of power to them
There is the minor problem that “genetic problems” don’t exist by themselves, but exist in genetic material which might have what most would call positive traits. Some of these might be recessive. Plus negative traits might be recessive also, and will not be eliminated. Plus, given our slow breeding cycle, you won’t see any “advantage” for a long time, but will see the civil liberties implications immediately. So, even on a purely utilitarian basis, this fails badly.
We also have the problem of who gets to decide which are good traits and which are bad. After all, no matter what the benefit to society would be of them being sterilized, I still feel eugenicists should be allowed to have children.
Depends on what school of ethics you subscribe to.
It also depends on whether the traits you are trying to get rid of are heritable, and how much we actually know about the heritability.
For myself, it would be massively over the line of what I think a legitimate function of government is. As a small “l” libertarian guy, this has nothing to do with protecting personal freedom and everything to do with violating it.
What track record?
If the government of Israel required genetic testing to prevent things like tay Sachs. Is that eugneics?
What if the government sterilized folks with Down’s syndrome or the mentally retarded?
How about we chemically sterilize poor people (something reversible) who accept welfare?
How about if we forcibly chemically sterilize drug addicts?
How about if we sterilize rapists and child molesters?
The track record of western governments practicing eugenics, whether in the US, UK, Germany or elsewhere hasn’t exactly been pristine.
It’s like freedom of speech in a way. Everyone themself “knows” what speech should be allowed and what should be banned, just like everyone “knows” who should be allowed to breed and who shouldn’t. But we all disagree on it, and when we let the government decide for us, either what we should be allowed to say and believe, or who should be allowed to have kids, or a host of other matters, we get pretty negative results.
As for your list:
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.
By definition eugenics oppresses a minority.
Governments have a very bad record with regards to eugenics, so no we shouldn’t have government administered eugenics. As opposed to people doing the same thing on their own; people do things like choose not to have children with someone else because they both have the same nasty recessive gene, and disaster fails to strike. Eugenics seems to work just fine - as long as no one with the power to coerce is involved. But give the government the authority to engage in eugenics and I’ve yet to hear of a case where it didn’t turn into a disaster.
Governments, including the US, sterilized people against their wills.
Just required testing? No.
These all could be arguably called Eugenics, depending on the motivation.
Sure, let’s have one of the Right’s favorite conspiracy theories and liberal-bashing bugaboos come true.
Government mandated eugenics implies that society desired outcome are to be achieved by artificially and by force to influence the mental and physical outcomes of progeny for generations to come.
The objective in the referenced thread is to provide a voluntary means to prevent individual outcomes of serious pain and anguish.
The latter is a choice, no different ethically than aborting a fetus because it has Down’s Syndrome.
The former is simply an intrusion on individuality.
No. Testing gives people information and many U.S. states require blood tests before they’ll grant a marriage license.
Absolutely. You know the Nazis did exactly this, right?
All four of those proposals are eugenics as far as I’m concerned. Why in the world is someone unfit to breed if they are poor, and why is it the government’s place to make that determination? By the way that’ll do wonders to create a more equitable society where governing isn’t dominated by the rich. 
I could see sterilizing child molesters if it worked in preventing them from hurting other people - the problem is that chemical castration doesn’t do that unless the person is actually committed to stopping.
Screw this selective breeding crap, in the sense of trying to pair off people according to some formula. More likely is a Gattaca-style scenario in which an already-married couple voluntarily undergo a genetic screening process to avoid passing identifiable and undesirable traits to their children.
In general I think that eugenics are morally a bad idea. I don’t think that humans should have a general rule over other humans’ reproductive rights.
I can think of three objections to this:
incest. however you define it, the only moral objection I can think of against incest is that it might result in malformed humans. Incest is a relative term, and the effects are relative too. Most fairly closely related procreation, as long as it’s not restricted to the family for a few generations, is fairly harmless, and IMHO should be allowed as long as it’s not forced (and I make that restriction to all human sex).
restricting the reproductive rights of “obviously bad variants” is a good idea. The problem with this is that determining “obviously bad variants” is quite arbitrary. At least in our society.
in very limited environments (think desert islands), without enough resources to feed everyone, I might consider it permissible to use eugenics. But we (in the Western/modern world) are not even close to that kind of situation.