Article 107

“The Nonviolence of Celibacy, the Compassion of Eugenics, the Violence of Abortion”
The modern West prides itself on moral sophistication. Its universities lecture the world on ethics, its courts declare new rights as if from Sinai, and its NGOs export these decrees like sacred tablets. Yet beneath the rhetoric lies a deep hypocrisy. The West calls abortion a “human right,” though every abortion ends in the deliberate killing of an unborn child. At the same time, it treats voluntary celibacy—the most harmless and nonviolent form of birth control—as if it were irrelevant, archaic, or repressive. And worse, it demonizes eugenics—even when it means nothing more sinister than the longing of parents to bring forth healthy children. This is not moral sophistication. It is moral schizophrenia.

Consider abortion. Strip away the euphemisms, the talk of “choice” and “privacy,” and what remains is a simple biological fact: an abortion stops a beating heart. Ultrasounds make this undeniable; embryology textbooks confirm it. Whatever one’s metaphysics about “personhood,” the act itself involves death. It is not merely the removal of tissue, but the destruction of a distinct human organism in its earliest form. This is why even the most hardened defenders of abortion are squeamish about images of the procedure. The violence is real. The fetus does not consent, does not resist, but is extinguished all the same.

And yet abortion is not merely tolerated but sanctified in the West. It has been baptized as a human right, wrapped in the robes of liberty and equality. Roe v. Wade in 1973 declared it part of the “right to privacy”; European courts have treated it as integral to women’s autonomy. Feminists argued, not without reason, that control over reproduction was essential for equality in public life. Without legal abortion, women would remain chained to biology in a way men were not. And so abortion became the sacrament of modern liberalism. The violence to the unborn was reframed as justice for the mother.

But notice the blind spot. If the real issue is avoiding unwanted pregnancy, then celibacy is the most effective and the most nonviolent solution. Voluntary celibacy kills no one. It requires no scalpels, no pills, no clinics. It involves nothing more than self-control. Across civilizations, celibacy was once regarded as the highest path of discipline and compassion: the Buddhist monk, the Hindu sannyasi, the Christian nun. No fetus is ever dismembered because two people chose restraint. And yet the modern world mocks celibacy as “repression” while elevating abortion as “freedom.” This is an inversion of values so perverse it borders on absurdity.

Now consider eugenics. The word itself is radioactive, a synonym for atrocity. One need only whisper it and images of Nazi Germany, forced sterilization, and racial “hygiene” flood the mind. And yes, the history is dark. In the United States, tens of thousands were sterilized against their will in the early 20th century—poor women, the disabled, minorities, prisoners—under laws upheld by the Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell (1927), where Justice Holmes sneered that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” In Nazi Germany, the logic of eugenics metastasized into genocide, with Jews, Roma, and the disabled marked for extermination in the name of racial purity. These horrors cannot be denied.

But must we therefore condemn every form of eugenics for eternity? The literal meaning of the word—good birth—is as old as humanity itself. Parents have always longed for healthy children. Every culture has practiced some form of mate selection, whether by horoscope, caste, class, or reputation for strength and beauty. Today, modern medicine allows us to screen for deadly genetic disorders: thalassemia, sickle-cell anemia, Huntington’s disease. Couples undergo IVF with preimplantation genetic diagnosis to avoid embryos carrying catastrophic mutations. Is this violence? No. It prevents suffering before it begins. It spares a child a life of agony. It spares parents the heartbreak of burying their offspring.

The contradiction is glaring. Abortion, which certainly destroys life, is celebrated as liberation. Eugenics, which in its voluntary, medical form saves life from pain, is condemned as a crime. One act is bloody but fashionable; the other is bloodless but taboo. The reason is history: abortion became the banner of feminism, while eugenics became the brand of fascism. One was marketed as choice, the other as coercion. But ideas should be judged by their substance, not by the sins of their past propagandists. To equate all eugenics with Auschwitz is as irrational as to equate all nationalism with Hitler.

In truth, “new eugenics” is already practiced quietly by the global elite. Wealthy parents in Manhattan and London select sperm or egg donors with college degrees, high IQ, good looks, and clean genetic panels. Asian middle classes pay for IVF clinics that offer screening for hereditary diseases. Even ordinary couples seek blood group compatibility and family medical histories before marriage. This is not racism. It is prudence. It is the universal human desire for one’s children to be healthy and strong. The hypocrisy is that the practice thrives in silence while the rhetoric condemns it in public.

India, too, faces this choice. Will it blindly follow the West’s moral schizophrenia, celebrating abortion while recoiling from voluntary genetic foresight? Or will it reclaim the older wisdom of nonviolence and responsibility? Celibacy is the truest right because it harms no one. Eugenics, if purged of coercion and racism, is an act of compassion for the next generation. Abortion, by contrast, is irreversible violence against the most defenseless.The moral measure is simple: does the act minimize harm? By that measure, celibacy and voluntary eugenics are far superior to abortion. Yet the West has reversed the hierarchy: killing is freedom, restraint is repression, foresight is fascism. This is not progress. It is confusion. And India, if it wishes to lead rather than follow, must have the courage to expose the contradiction.

If we look back, the longing for healthy children was never regarded as immoral until the 20th century’s political catastrophes. Plato in The Republic argued that rulers should arrange marriages to produce the strongest offspring, a primitive form of eugenics. The Spartans practiced ruthless selection, discarding weak infants to preserve military power. Ancient Hindus and Chinese placed great emphasis on lineage, compatibility, and inherited qualities in matchmaking. None of these cultures believed they were committing violence by seeking strength and health in their children. On the contrary, they considered it an obligation to family and society.

The 20th century changed everything. Eugenics was captured by the authoritarian state. What began as optimism—that science could eliminate disease—turned into coercion. In the United States, sterilization laws targeted the marginalized. In Germany, the pseudo-science of race hygiene merged with fanatical nationalism, and millions paid with their lives. When the Allies defeated the Nazis, eugenics was buried with them, declared forever suspect. To speak of “better children” became an obscenity.

And yet science did not stop. The double helix was unraveled in 1953. IVF was pioneered in the 1970s. By the 1990s, preimplantation genetic diagnosis allowed parents to screen embryos for lethal disorders. In 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui shocked the world by editing embryos with CRISPR. The language was cautious, the tone embarrassed—but the reality undeniable. The tools of eugenics are back, sharper than ever. Only now they are not wielded by states but by parents, not enforced by law but chosen by individuals.

This is the distinction liberals refuse to admit: between coercion and choice. The old eugenics was state tyranny; the new eugenics is personal responsibility. To deny families access to these tools because of Nazi crimes is to punish the living for the sins of the dead. It is like banning surgery because butchers once killed. The question is not whether eugenics is practiced—it already is, in every IVF clinic—but whether we will be honest about it and guide it ethically, or continue in hypocrisy.

Contrast this with abortion. Its defenders insist it is all about “choice.” But what kind of choice ends in death every single time? What kind of liberty requires a corpse as its proof? Abortion may liberate the mother, but it annihilates the child. Celibacy, by contrast, requires no corpse, produces no victim, and harms no one. Voluntary eugenics too, when it prevents genetic agony, does not kill—it heals before birth. If Gandhi’s principle of ahimsa means anything in the modern world, then abortion is its negation, while celibacy and compassionate eugenics are its fulfillment.

India in particular should be alert to this. Its intellectuals ape the West’s slogans without reflection, but India has its own civilizational inheritance. Hinduism and Buddhism both celebrated celibacy as a higher path. Jainism exalted nonviolence to the point of saintliness. Ancient Hindu law codes placed importance on family health and lineage, but never on coercive sterilization. Why should India import Western contradictions—defending abortion as “modern” while condemning eugenics as “fascist”—when its own tradition points to a clearer path?

Nor is this a mere matter of philosophy. India is entering the age of genetic crisis. Thalassemia, sickle-cell disease, and countless hereditary disorders afflict millions. The technology already exists to prevent them. But fear of the word “eugenics” keeps public debate frozen. Meanwhile, abortion rates in India are staggering: millions of fetuses destroyed every year, some for reasons as cruel as sex selection. The same society that recoils from genetic foresight tolerates widespread killing of the unborn. This is not morality. It is cowardice dressed as progress.

The hypocrisy becomes sharper when we consider wealth. Rich couples in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore already practice consumer eugenics: IVF, genetic tests, premium donors. The poor, lacking access, are left to chance. Abortion becomes their only tool of family planning, while genetic suffering perpetuates across generations. In effect, the liberal ban on speaking of eugenics entrenches inequality. The rich quietly improve their stock; the poor kill their unborn. Who benefits from this silence? Not the children of India.

What then is the way forward? First, we must shatter the taboo. To long for healthy children is not racism. To use science to prevent disease is not fascism. Voluntary eugenics—guided by compassion, stripped of coercion—should be celebrated as a moral advance. Second, we must expose abortion for what it is: not liberation but violence, not progress but tragedy. If restraint is possible, let restraint be practiced. If technology can prevent suffering without killing, let it be embraced. Only when no alternative remains should abortion even be discussed, and never as a right to be glorified.

The West cannot admit this because it is trapped by its own history: feminism tied its identity to abortion, and fascism tied its crimes to eugenics. India is not so trapped. It can choose differently. It can honor celibacy as a human right—the right that harms no one. It can support voluntary eugenics as an act of foresight and compassion. And in doing so, it can liberate itself from the West’s moral schizophrenia.

The future belongs not to those who glorify killing in the name of choice, but to those who embrace nonviolence in the name of health. The unborn child, the suffering family, and the generations to come deserve better than the hypocrisy of the present. They deserve the courage of honesty: that abortion is violence, celibacy is peace, and eugenics, rightly understood, is compassion.

Endnotes

1. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). The U.S. Supreme Court ruling that established abortion as part of the constitutional right to privacy.
2. Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). Reaffirmed the core of Roe v. Wade while allowing states some regulatory leeway.
3. Plato, The Republic, Book V. Advocated for controlled mating among the guardian class to produce the strongest offspring.
4. Xenophon, Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, describes Spartan practice of inspecting newborns for strength.
5. Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927). U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding compulsory sterilization laws; Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes infamously wrote, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
6. Stefan Kühl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (Oxford University Press, 2002). Documents the link between early U.S. eugenics and Nazi racial hygiene.
7. Francis Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (1883). Origin of the term “eugenics,” meaning “good birth.”
8. James D. Watson and Francis Crick, “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” Nature 171 (1953): 737–738. The discovery of the DNA double helix.
9. Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards, successful birth of Louise Brown in 1978, the world’s first “test-tube baby.”
10. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) introduced in the 1990s, allowing detection of genetic disorders before implantation. See A. Handyside et al., Nature 344, 768–770 (1990).
11. He Jiankui, announcement of CRISPR gene-edited babies, reported in Nature and MIT Technology Review (2018). Widely condemned but demonstrated the technical feasibility of germline editing.
12. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (1999). For a counter-view emphasizing choice and agency, though without confronting abortion directly.
13. Gandhi’s reflections on ahimsa in An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927), where nonviolence is cast as both personal discipline and social responsibility.
14. Martha Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (2000). Representative of liberal feminist arguments for reproductive rights.
15. Data on abortion rates in India from the Guttmacher Institute, Abortion and Unintended Pregnancy in India (2018), estimating 15.6 million abortions annually.