But as new technologies more recently began to revolutionize the human reproduction process and create new tools for assessing, selecting, or genetically engineering preimplanted embryos, many critics raised the specter of eugenics.[…]

The parallels between the ugly eugenics of the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth and what’s beginning to happen today are not insignificant.In both cases, a science at an early stage of development and with sometimes uncertain accuracy was or is being used to make big decisions—forced sterilization of the “feeble-minded” in the old days, not selecting a given embryo for implantation or terminating a pregnancy based on genetic indications today.In both cases, scientists and government officials seek to balance individual reproductive liberty with broader societal goals.In both cases, future potential children lose the opportunity to be born.In both cases, societies and individuals make culturally biased but irrevocable decisions about which lives are worth living and which are not.