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Exactly, something can be constitutional while nobody practices it. Eugenics being a good example. Supreme Court upheld it 100 years ago, no constitutional ame
by gammateam 8y ago
Exactly, something can be constitutional while nobody practices it.
Eugenics being a good example. Supreme Court upheld it 100 years ago, no constitutional amendment or ongoing fight with "two camps", people just stopped. State laws changed, licensing organizations stopped supporting it.
In this case, President could unilaterally tell the Border Patrol to not do it. Congress could make consequences.
- avar 8y agoEugenics is still practiced in developed countries today. It just became opt-in, e.g. screening pregnant women for downs syndrome, which is standard procedure: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/down-syndrome/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20355983 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/down-syndrome... Edit: I'm not saying that's comparable to practices called "eugenics" in the 1st half of the 20th century. Just narrowly responding to "people just stopped [the practice of eugenics]". The Wikipedia article on the subject agrees with this usage of the word, "practices that [aim to] improv[e] the genetic quality of a human population"[1]. There's also the whole topic of "designer babies" which has also been called "new eugenics"[2]. This is admittedly way off-topic from the original discussion. I just thought it was an interesting side-note. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_reproductive_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_reproductive_technolo...
- bad_user 8y ago> screening pregnant women for downs syndrome That’s not related to eugenics.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoDetecting and aborting low-quality babies isn't related to eugenics?
- Retric 8y agoFirst detecting often does not result in abortion, let alone mandatory abortion or sterilization by the state. Eugenics also generally focused on sterilization vs termination, with a focus on long term changes in the human population. And sterilization is only relevant for people likely to reproduce so the elderly and people with Down syndrome are irrelevant from a eugenics standpoint. Finally, small scale things like prescreening sperm donors is not going to make a meaningful difference to the overall population. For eugenics to have a meaningful impact the idea was to manage the overall population at scale. It’s a more insidious idea than often portrayed in a modern context because the original idea has become anathema.
- sifoobar 8y agoLow-quality babies? Wow. Because they don't meet your standards? They're human babies, and there is no such thing as a low quality human; though people like you sure come close enough.
- larkost 8y agoNo, that is exactly eugenics. It is removing an unwanted part of the (potential) population. I happen to think it is a really good idea, but it does solidly fall under the term eugenics.
- gammateam 8y agoDoctor's unilaterally sterilizing adults is an unpopular practice, which is what is referred to in my original post.