You may have heard about the word “eugenics”, but do you know what it is? Most people don’t. But the science, and the issues it is raising, has prominently featured across the news/media outlets around Australia this week, sparking quite some debate. A Melbourne mother of three, Caitlyn Bailey, recently travelled to the United States to select the gender of her next baby – her fourth. Ms Bailey’s other three children were all conceived naturally. The story was all there on the front page (and page 5) of Tuesday’s Herald Sun. Ms Bailey, “a single mum, wants to have a ‘balanced’ family” – in terms of her children, that is, but ‘balance’, apparently, does not include a father for her children in that picture. She asserted that she was not interested in dating apps because there were “so many variables in waiting for a partner.” Well, that’s probably true. But that comment alone raises several issues about family planning, marriage, the rights of children, and so on.
However, my concern here is not about moralising on Ms Bailey’s lifestyle choices, but that branch of science called eugenics. There is a growing philosophy driving eugenics and this was stridently argued by Ms Bailey’s United States doctor, Dr Daniel Potter. He made the claim this week that it is “absolutely ridiculous” that Aussie parents don’t have the legal option to choose the gender of the child before conception. He asserted that IVF was once thought to be controversial but was now accepted. Now, I remember these debates across our society in the late 80s and into the 2000s. But IVF is not nearly on the same plane as eugenics. Ethical IVF medicine is very valid if it helps a couple to have children who otherwise may not be able to conceive naturally. But even then there are – for me, anyway – some ethical caveats and concerns. I would personally have an ethical concern if IVF was used in unbiblical ways, for example. And this is where the merging of IVF assistance and eugenics philosophy could merge without due consideration for ethics and unintended – or even intended - consequences.
I am old enough to remember the arguments for IVF medical technology being used for noble purposes – and noble purposes are fine for the most part. That was then. We are in a different place now. Just two months ago, here in Melbourne, a female prisoner serving a long sentence for murdering her housemate in front of that housemate’s young child, was granted permission to access IVF treatment and to, ultimately, give birth and raise her baby in prison – all paid for by Medicare. Is this what the pioneers of IVF medical technology really envisaged? Is this IVF treatment for noble, humane purposes? Well, the community outcry against the state government for allowing such a crazy possibility loudly yelled “NO”, and the prisoner’s access to IVF was immediately revoked. Of course, IVF technology is misused every day now, in my humble opinion.
According to the National Human Genome Research Institute “Eugenics is an inaccurate theory linked to present day forms of discrimination, racism, ableism and colonialism”. Well, I’m not sure I would include racism and colonialism in my definition – that’s a bit too woke for me – and that statement is clearly political and ideological, if we take it at face value. But there is some truth in it. So what is eugenics, then?
Eugenics is a growing area of science that has been around for quite some time in various fields including cattle breeding. But “selective breeding”, which goes back nearly 200 years in Australia when Merino sheep were bred and became the world’s best wool producers, is one thing. Eugenics is quite another. Eugenics is a blend of science and ideology – it’s not just science and not just ideology. The ideology drives the science. That makes me immediately suspicious. According to the on-line Oxford Dictionary, eugenics is “the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups.”
Well, eugenics is back. Even way back before Merino sheep, in many countries, there was a very conscious mindset where, for example, people were careful not to marry “below their station”. This was more about class, but the same basic idea is behind eugenics. Society wanted the children to “marry up” and “improve the stock” of the nation. But I digress.
Eugenics science has become a major thing. But the science is becoming more and more synthesised with dangerous philosophy and ideology and, if left strictly unchecked (like we didn’t do with IVF for noble purposes), the science will increasingly become a means to evil ends. One such end is “vanity parenting” where parents get to design their own child from gender, hair and eye colour, to height, intelligence quotient, athleticism, academic potential, social behaviour, even life expectancy – before they are medically conceived. This technology already exists. We get to play God and, for now in some countries, we can choose the sex of our children before they are medically “conceived”.
This is a very slippery slope and a long way from assisted reproduction for noble purposes. We’ve been in surrogacy land for some years, too. But eugenics philosophies are a far, far greater and increasingly sinister danger. Messing with actual human genes, genetic engineering (remember Wuhan?) and modification, is a whole other plane. Although it is now scientifically possible to design the children we want, to take a line from the 1997 movie, Gattica, “there is no gene for the human spirit.” Imagine a world where people with “inferior genes” were regarded as substandard and then relegated to the lowliest roles in society? Imagine a world where insurance companies could increase insurance premiums because your gene testing indicates you are a high health risk, or worse, deny insurance altogether? Imagine a world where you were only valued and respected if you had an outstanding set of genes, and good genes were essential in any résumé? Imagine a world where before a couple got engaged to be married a gene test was legally required and where love was relegated to far lesser importance? Imagine a world where those who could not afford – or did not want – designer children, would have all kinds of opportunities denied them (education, employment etc.)? A whole new class-based society where the wealthy could monopolise eugenic technologies and virtually enslave the rest of us would be far worse than communism. That’s where eugenics ideology is heading right now. Eugenics is back and its end game is demonically driven.
We, the people of God, have a sacred duty to stand up and speak, right now, to our politicians and ensure they get ahead of the eugenics curve so that government is not playing catch up yet again.
Psalms 139:13-14 (NIV)
“For You [God] created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother's womb. 14 I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
There is so much more to say and discover concerning this issue - I have only touched on it here to alert you. Do your own research, but start interceding – and start writing letters to our MPs, while we still can.
Think on these things.
Ps Milton
[Sources: Herald Sun, Tuesday 12th May 2025; National Human Genome Research Institute; Oxford Dictionary]