hitler himself based his sterilization laws on american precedents, and pointed to american eugenicists like henry ford as inspirational heroes.
the basic premise of eugenics - to improve the human race using science - is laudable, even if the experience with it 100 years ago freaked a lot of people out. if we can find genetic diseases like tay-sachs and eliminate them, we should do that. autism isn't quite like that as the mutations are largely de novo, but we could identify the types of mutations that lead to extreme retardation and implement abortion as a humane alternative to raising severely retarded children. that type of eugenics is the utilization of science for public policy, which is truly progressive, and something we should be embarrassed about abandoning, as a society, in favour of empty conservatism and trite christian platitudes that help nobody.
the problem with eugenics as it was practiced was that it was wrong. genetic superiority is today understood to be maximized via the highest levels of variation, not by minimizing variation and enforcing conformity. there is no correlation between eye colour and intelligence. etc. the eugenics movement happened before watson & crick; they didn't even know what dna was at all!
our far superior understanding of dna should help us more effectively improve humanity via science, and that's the kind of politics i want to support, not some right-wing bullshit about being afraid to "play god".
there is no such thing as god; it's a stupid, facile idea for the intellectually feeble. we have the science. let's use it, but let's do it correctly.
it should at this stage be up to the mothers, but i would strongly support using dna testing to find extreme cases of autism before they develop, and abortion as a legal solution, when it is positively identified, with high probability to total certainty. we are not far from that.