[JimmyAustin]

Imagine if you could pay a sum of money to have a certain number of eggs harvested and implanted, then measured to determine fitness over: - Likelyhood of diabetes/cancer - Height - Intelligence - Mental Illness

How strange would it be to add attractiveness to that list? Is it really being a bad parent to pick out the best attributes for your child?

[recursive]

There are a ton of embedded assumptions in this question, and I disagree with pretty much all of them. It wouldn't be that strange to add attractiveness to the list, but you're starting from a very already strange place. It's good parenting to pick the best for your kids. But that's different from picking your kids.

[perl4ever]

I disagree that it's "very strange" or even strange at all to "pick your kids", setting aside adoption.

Choosing which sperm is fittest is something that's done unconsciously (by the egg) and consciously (by choosing a partner), and selecting them through technology, (such as DNA sequencing or abortion) is just another method of accomplishing the goal that is fundamental to reproduction. So I disagree with the idea that it's strange to "pick your kids" - although that doesn't address moral issues.

As far as moral issues go, some people want to outlaw abortion of babies with Down Syndrome. But in any case, it's common to do that (in some places more than others), hence why people propose to stop it.

Eugenics is a bad word. My own thoughts are that while some people say "eugenics" and mean the selection of desirable genetic characteristics by anyone and any means, I think that is an untenable definition. I find it more useful to use "eugenics" to mean the selection of genetic characteristics by someone other than the parents, an external authority that "knows best". That is the sort of eugenics that I think ought to be guarded against, primarily.