We also had one of the strongest eugenics movements in the world, under the same progressive flag as women's suffrage. It took the horrors of WWII to snap us out of it.
And it set us back because we overcorrected. The biggest evil of historical eugenics was the non-consensual application, not the idea that we should improve the gene pool.
This thread is an interesting summary of possible "eugenics" type applications and if those surveyed consider them moral today:
The Catholic Church still opposes all of those except for offering network support and feeding single mothers (in which cases it recommends generosity). I don't think that's an overcorrection; I think it's the result of thinking very hard about human dignity over many generations.
