10/22/2026
A century ago in the United States, eugenics was explicit public policy. States forcibly sterilized tens of thousands of people deemed “unfit,” including people with disabilities, people with mental illness, and the poor. In 1927, the Supreme Court upheld compulsory sterilization in Buck v. Bell, giving constitutional backing to the practice.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Buck-v-Bell
These policies were sold as scientific progress and protection against supposed burdens on society. Behind that justification was a judgment about whose children should be born.
On October 20, 2026, Poland’s lower house of parliament approved bills to ease abortion restrictions. The proposed provision would cover a medically indicated high probability of either a severe and irreversible fetal abnormality or an incurable disease threatening the fetus’s life.
https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-parliament-eases-abortion-laws-ichallenge-conservative-president/
The bills have not yet become law and are likely to be up against a presidential veto.
Compulsory sterilization used state power to prevent people from reproducing. Abortion access puts that same power in the hands of masses of individuals.
Are we supporting people facing difficult circumstances, or reinforcing the idea that some lives are less worth living?
Many of us know someone who might once have been labeled “unfit.” None of us would be here today if our parents or grandparents had been deemed “unfit”. The grim history should make us cautious about treating a diagnosis as a measure of human worth. We should not become the arbiters of whose lives are better off ended.
