there’s a reverse slippery slope effect where a range of related things all get described as ‘eugenics’:
1. attempting to commit genocide
2. using force or coercion to control the reproduction of others
3. offering incentives or encouragement to influence the reproduction of others
4. making observations that could imply that people should reproduce at different rates
5. simply observing that people currently reproduce at different rates
I think the only way to be completely safe from accusations of eugenics in the first few senses is to avoid any observations of reproduction rates and definitely avoid making any suggestions of how they might be changed, no matter how indirectly or consensually.
One thing that’s interesting to me is how, with the lapsing of most government efforts to forcibly enact eugenic policies, the eugenic aspects of personal family planning become more relevant. People would generally react pretty poorly if the government mandated that all fetuses with serious developmental problems be aborted or genetically modified, but given the ability to notice this and do something about it themselves, people will still do it often enough to have a visible effect over time.
Getting away from the “eu” pretext entirely, sex-selective abortion is already a thing with visible downstream effects. These are things we can grapple with by attempting to reduce stigma, but there will always be some sorts of people heavily stigmatized, and the ability to detect that a real or hypothetical child belongs to those groups before birth or even before conception is going to continue to increase. So at some point people are going to be stuck having to decide which they like better, personal bodily autonomy or forbidding eugenics, and it’ll be a messy situation all around.
I mean, if you offer me the choice between a baby that’s directly related to me and a genetically-engineered gauranteed above-average-or-better designer baby that’s directly related to me, I’m gonna take the second one, because there is no reason for me to have a crippled baby if the baby does not yet exist.
There is no advantage whatsoever to a severe peanut allergy, for instance (though I don’t have one). Most of the SJ stuff is based on the people already existing, and it isn’t their fault peanut allergies are a thing, but a hypothetical person that doesn’t exist yet doesn’t have the same moral weight as a person that already does.