JONATHAN ADLER, writing in The Corner, makes a point about the difference between eugenics and reproductive technologies that’s somewhat different from the one that I make below, but still significant:

Webster’s Collegiate defines eugenics as “a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed.” I think that last phrase is key. Eugenics may not require control of human mating, but it seems to me that the term — and the revulsion it rightly engenders — does require broader racial ambitions (and, I should note, does not require government control). This is not to say that genetic engineering of children by their parents is a good thing — I am not sure whether I accept Bailey’s arguments — only that making decision about one’s own children is fundamentally different from trying to engineer an entire race.

I would agree that eugenics may not necessarily require government control in the abstract — but it always has in the concrete, unless you want to include such things as genetic counseling for Tay-Sachs carriers under the label eugenics, in which case calling something “eugenics” is a long way from proving that it’s evil.