Abstract

This article is intended to be both an analysis, and also an account: that of a generation of young citizens, to which I belong, which is both enthusiastic about and worried by recent advances in genetics. In the modern world mind set evolves very rapidly. In the late 1960s women demanded ‘a baby when I want!’ The right to contraception followed. Then, in the early 1970s, another slogan was heard: ‘a baby if I want.’ Shortly afterwards, a woman's right to abortion was recognized. Now, new demands are increasingly being synthesized as: ‘a baby of the kind I want.’ The spectre of eugenics is slowly and insidiously being reborn at the heart of democracy.