Eugenics in France
Despite its political failure under the Third Republic, Eugenics in France experienced early and thorough theoretical development. This medical eugenics ideology advocated for the formation of a human elite under the guidance of the French state as early as the late 18th century. Subsequent awareness of the theories of British anthropologist and statistician Francis Galton, the first theorist of eugenics, led to the creation of the French Society of Eugenics in 1913.
Despite the numerous calls from French eugenics theorists for interventionist measures that persisted until the first half of the 20th century, this ideology exerted a negligible influence on French citizens, in contrast to its impact on those in Anglo-Saxon countries and the Third Reich. France's adoption of a single law inspired by eugenics was limited to the establishment of a mandatory prenuptial certificate under the Vichy regime. The reasons for this failure are numerous and are particularly linked to the influence of Catholicism, neo-Lamarckism, and depopulation resulting from wars.
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The most prominent proponents of eugenics included Nobel Prize-winning physician Charles Richet, who served as president of the French Society of Eugenics and advocated for the elimination of disabled children, and Alexis Carrel, who directed the French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems during the Vichy regime. In the late 19th century, Paul Robin personified the neo-Malthusian branch of French eugenics. Pediatrician Adolphe Pinard developed an ambitious project for controlling reproduction, and military doctor Charles Binet-Sanglé proposed the creation of a "human stud farm." Notwithstanding the subsequent trial of Nazi doctors in Nuremberg for crimes against humanity, the eugenics ideology continued to be defended, albeit briefly, by biologist Jean Rostand during the 1950s. This defense was facilitated by a lack of awareness regarding the atrocities committed in the name of eugenics on German soil, which resulted in a paucity of official condemnations of these practices in France.
The advent of a novel form of eugenics in France, akin to that observed in other Western countries, has given rise to a series of ethical dilemmas concerning medical practices since the 1990s, particularly in the aftermath of the Perruche case. Following the enactment of the inaugural bioethics legislation in 1994, France formally denounced all forms of collective eugenic selection as "crimes against the human species." Nevertheless, the nation permits the practice of individual choice of births. The discourse surrounding eugenics has been reinvigorated by inquiries concerning medical practices such as prenatal diagnosis (PND), preimplantation diagnosis (PGD), and selective abortion, formally recognized as medical termination of pregnancy (MTP) in French legislation, which is authorized at any stage in instances of suspected severe genetic diseases or disabilities. This has led to a discourse surrounding the ethical considerations of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), a process that involves the screening of embryos for specific genetic abnormalities, and selective abortion, defined as the termination of a pregnancy to avoid giving birth to a child with a suspected or detected disability, such as Down syndrome or dwarfism. This has prompted extensive deliberations among medical professionals, ethicists, philosophers, association leaders, and political figures, leading to the refinement of bioethical legislation in France.