Why abortion is unlike eugenics

Comment published on New York Times online blog in response to op-ed essay by Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat, “Clarence Thomas’s dangerous idea,” June 1, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/opinion/sunday/clarence-thomas-abortion.html#commentsContainer&permid=100755202:100755202:

A "bio-political" eugenics is a "progressive" cause of improving society's overall well-being, deciding on life, death, health, and reproduction on that basis.  Eugenics is a matter of positive government action, while the legality of abortion compels no action. 

Modern states are too involved in deciding how people should live.  (Consider the overreach of the managerial mental health industry, or Belgium's authorizing doctors to assist the despairing in suiciding).  And we should resist the cheapening of life for the poor.

Interestingly, the concept of human rights (of which the claimed right to life of fetuses is an appropriation) may not be what is needed to counter these trends.  Rights tend to correlate with needs and through them with providable services.  Marx's slogan "to each according to his needs" was realized by the 20th century welfare states, which exchange the need-provisions of commodities and services for labor ("from each according to his abilities").  Benevolent paternalist governments give people what they need, in  exchange for duties and payments, and respect their rights, which in the end are mostly animal rights: food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and freedom from physical harm.  

Abortion decisions are about a way of life (if and when to have a child), routinely theorized as attaching to a biological potentiality (as "right" meets "science").  A eugenics model with state as actor rather resembles -- compulsory childbirth.