My feelings on abortion are well known.
We certainly have the means to prevent conception, wherever, whenever. They are cheap, available, and can be distributed readily. That doesn't mean they will necessarily be used, but they are there.
That will not be well greeted in populations just a few years, if that, removed from high mortality rates, low survival to their teens, and short lifespans which have traditionally viewed having many descendants as evidence of a life well lived, sexual prowess, virility/fertility, and an all around good thing.
Other sitgma attach:
http://www.egyptindependent.com/buying-birth-control-sexual-stigmas-and-stds/ there is a farly good rundown at the link.
I prefer prevention over termination, simply because I regard the latter as murder, and no culture which will not practice the former willingly which values life will engage in the latter except under the most brutal compulsion.
Eugenics are a different kettle of worms, though they are somewhat related. It is a process of not only limiting a population in numbers, but in determining the genetics and bloodlines of those who will procreate, effectively selectively breeding humans through decree, using sterilization (physical or chemical, temporary or permanent), limiting conjugal contact or actively forbidding it, and actively removing entire traits from the population by removing the individuals who carry them. While eugenecists may claim it is just weeding the garden of the human population, I would submit that many of the medicines we have come from weeds, and the only difference between a weed and a crop is how much someone desires to have it grown.
Make no mistake, if the current group running things get their way, this is coming. At first, as ever, the soft sell, then the hard sell, then force.
For now, most DNA testing outside criminal courts is conducted voluntarily, even paid for by the subject. We've all seen the ads, "find out who your ancestors are" (I understand there may be some folks who have no idea because of adoption, or the absence of a biological parent, or something on that order, but for most people I am prompted to ask, "You don't know?") Aside from eliminating the mailman or milkman from your personal gene pool, why the big push? There is a peek at that in preemployment DNA testing to identify potential for diseases, and the denial of health insurance on that basis (and even employment) will be used as a tool of attrition.
DNA evidence not only tracks your 'tribal roots', but so much more--in fact everything about you not derived from experience and education. Health outlook as a set of probabilities, including recessive and dominant genetic problems (or potential ones), capacity (theoretical) for intelligence, perhaps even aspects of your personality, your physical attributes, demeanor, possibly even psychological traits. With that information, the "undesirable" aspects of you can be eliminated from the gene pool with the harsh hand of totalitarian government, and perhaps with in utero testing, even you, yourself, before you see the light of day.
Of course the drawbacks to creating a 'master race' leave it like the AmerInds in the face of smallpox: particularly vulnerable, en masse, to a novel pathogen or series of pathogens. The law of unintended consequences can be harsh indeed. Entire immunities could be discarded by pitching the aspects of the race the overlords decided were undesirable, something that could take humanity down the path to being a biological footnote in the fossil record.
Then there is the question of who decides, ultimately, and on what basis, what is or is not desirable?
Will selection be artificially made for those who are the offspring of PhDs? Will the likes of Stephen Hawking be discarded in utero because they have a gene that heralds a neuromuscular disorder? Will those with weak backs and strong minds prevail, and what will the folks with strong backs make of that? They will not go quietly into that night.
Either way, the eugenic highway is the road to totalitarianism, and possibly extinction. Abortion is just a tool.
For a moment, if not longer, trust that depravity is its own reward, that The Almighty knew what He was doing when He created humans, and that the variations serve purpose. That purpose isn't always known to us, but is serious enough He made Himself manifest in the flesh that we might receive a future in His presence for the next step, after this life. No human can predict based on superficial attributes the utility, if you will, of any individual in our society, in the human population just by the blueprint, because every human takes on another dimension beyond their physical presence. Eliminate by race, and the man who invented blood typing, among others is gone. Eliminate by religion, and the atom is harnessed perhaps, by someone else with a very different outcome. Tinker with the genetics of the poorer side of town, and possibly eliminate the savant who figures out how to harness space and time and gravity and provide the very ticket to human survival and our spread throughout a fertile galaxy, eliminating the perceived need for the penurious treatment of resources.
Our aid programs are often a failure, funds and supplies sequestered by political entities, used to feed/pay armies to oppress their domain. Giving a man a fish, only guarantees he will be on your doorstep tomorrow, and that he will grow ever resentful of begging for dinner. We need to teach them to fish, so to speak, and leave them to it. Hunger does wonders for those trying to retain their lessons. If we fear their revolt, then quit selling them implements of war beyond their own abilities to produce. Let them be self sufficient on a small scale, productive on a large one, and they will grow prosperous and be able to feed their own. Don't put that burden on just a few backs from elsewhere.
It would be silly to think any one nation could implement either course of action, or impose it in a vacuum. Certainly there are those who will trade guns for butter, or butter for guns. Power and greed know no boundaries, be they racial, national, or cultural, but are seductive sirens each must resist of their own volition if they are to be free. For those who will not resist that song, who insist on pillaging their citizenry, no help. No refugees. Let them rise up and pull down their tyrants and offer them the philosophies of freedom and let them choose for themselves.
Let the churches go forth amid all of this to pass along those ideas of freedom, not the enslavement offered by some, but they do so at their own risk, as ever mindful that they will be under the protection of The Almighty, which we have been guaranteed is sufficient.
Sorry,
@sneakypete , but I can't divorce human tinkering with the design from references to the Creator. However I have tried to present very real and biologically sound reasons, along with cultural ones, for not practicing eugenics and not favoring abortion. The two go hand in hand. Even the most devout Darwinist would allow natural selection to run its course over selective breeding, mainly because for all their pomp and ego, those who would be making the selections have no f***ing idea what they are doing in the long run. These are the same lot who would tell you the planet is going to roast and drown everyone on the coasts (oh, some time in the next 300 years) in order to manipulate the populace into throwing away their freedom, their technology, their birthright. I sure would not trust them to choose the human genotype.
