How to Use eugenic in a Sentence
eugenic
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But today that is not the primary purview of eugenic methods.
—Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 27 Mar. 2013
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But the tradition has certainly moved away from its eugenic roots.
—Audrey Farley, Longreads, 20 June 2019
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In that sense Edwards’s eugenic aspirations should be part of his legacy.
—Osagie K. Obasogie, Scientific American, 4 Oct. 2013
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The letter goes on to espouse additional racist and eugenic language.
—Nicole Nixon, Sacramento Bee, 15 Apr. 2024
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Do not buy into this eugenic thinking that expects the most vulnerable to be sacrificed.
—A.h. Reaume, Longreads, 10 Feb. 2022
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No evidence has surfaced that Berkeley used the money for eugenic research.
—Los Angeles Times, 27 Oct. 2020
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By the mid-20th century, overt eugenic rhetoric fell out of favor, but the impulse to manage people’s reproduction did not.
—Sonya Borrero, STAT, 1 May 2026
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Unless something is done, the medical profession may once again exhibit a cozy relationship with eugenic goals.
—Eric Heisig, cleveland, 28 Oct. 2019
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In any eugenic scheme of society, the physician, and particularly those concerned with preventive medicine, must play an important part.
—Emma Peterson and Daniel Martinez Hosang / Made By History, TIME, 20 June 2024
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These eugenic sterilizations were framed as protecting the genetic quality of the nation.
—Sonya Borrero, STAT, 1 May 2026
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But some researchers fear this gene screening work could be misapplied and used to further racist or eugenic thinking, even though race is a social, not a genetic, classification.
—NBC News, 14 Oct. 2020
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Due to widespread activism and the advent of new legal protections, many states finally dismantled their eugenic policies in the late 1970s.
—Lauren Shallish, The Conversation, 24 Feb. 2025
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By another measure, though, Laughlin’s eugenic advocacy was a historic debacle.
—Arthur Caplan, Scientific American, 17 Oct. 2024
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Fritz Lenz was still very much alive and espousing his eugenic theories when his son took on Chemie Grünenthal, in the name of every single infant severely disabled at the hands of bad medicine.
—Katie Hafner, Scientific American, 26 Sep. 2024
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And several past presidents supported voluntary and compulsory eugenic sterilizations at some point in their careers.
—Byrodrigo Pérez Ortega, science.org, 24 Jan. 2023
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Nor do conservatives acknowledge the eugenic mechanisms rampant within the criminal justice system.
—Audrey Farley, Longreads, 20 June 2019
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This century is likely to be dominated by eugenic thinking, and all the more so as different populations face the specter of demographic decline and environmental threat.
—Keith Kloor, Discover Magazine, 2 Aug. 2011
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Immigration policy is closely aligned with eugenic principles which support social stratification and reject basic human rights.
—Giorgi Minasovi and Jonathan Jk Stoltman, STAT, 5 Apr. 2024
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Under California’s eugenic law, first passed in 1909, anyone committed to a state institution could be sterilized.
—Smithsonian, 23 Mar. 2018
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An obsession with hierarchy does not make a person a totalitarian, just as a devotion to proto-eugenic thinking combined with a rigid religious morality does not make a person a Nazi.
—Laurie Penny, Longreads, 12 July 2018
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As Thompson and other historians have long noted, the Comstock Act was also rooted in eugenic sentiment, the idea that not enough of the right—in other words, white—babies were being produced.
—Melissa Gira Grant, The New Republic, 12 Apr. 2023
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Genetic screening, and the underlying assumption that some humans are born better than others, often invites comparisons to Nazi eugenic experiments.
—Seyward Darby, Longreads, 17 Nov. 2022
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Payton Gendron, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, seems to have been inspired by replacement theory, a eugenic conspiracy that suggests that immigrants and people of color are driving white people to extinction.
—New York Times, 15 June 2022
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Schottenstein, an Orthodox Jew, expressed confusion at accusations that the campaign contained eugenic overtones.
—Nick Lichtenberg, Fortune, 8 Oct. 2025
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Reprehensible as much of the eugenic program was, there is something unobjectionable and perhaps even morally required in the part of its motivation that sought to endow future generations with genes that might enable their lives to go better.
—Kyle Munkittrick, Discover Magazine, 1 Mar. 2011
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These ethically complex practices around the beginning and end of life have always stirred controversy, but the conversation is heating up — just as some American political leaders are espousing eugenic ideas.
—O. Rose Broderick, STAT, 2 Jan. 2026
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Eugenic arguments underlay the rationale behind the Immigration Act of 1924, scholars note.
—Harry Bruinius, The Christian Science Monitor, 26 Aug. 2017
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The Progressive movement in the early part of the twentieth century did overlap in discomfiting ways with eugenic thinking, from Margaret Sanger to some of the early leaders of the battle against infant mortality.
—Perri Klass, The New Yorker, 27 Feb. 2023
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Although there is nothing inherently eugenic about IVF, being able to manipulate human conception outside of the womb is an essential platform technology for any modern eugenic goal.
—Osagie K. Obasogie, Scientific American, 4 Oct. 2013
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Though ultimately discredited following the atrocities endured during multiple years of Nazi reign, eugenic theory was steeped in this sinister view of genetic governance, manifest destiny run amok.
—Jessica Helfand, Scientific American, 13 Aug. 2020
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'eugenic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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