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TheOtherDave comments on Blues, Greens and abortion - Less Wrong Discussion
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I'll point out that this policy involves a kind of historical contingency that might be problematic.
That is, to pick an extreme example for clarity: if in 1900 ~100% of people with property X choose to have it "cured," and in 2000 ~100% of people with property X choose to go on having it, it seems to follow that you endorse preventing their births in 1900 but not in 2000. Of course, if the program of preventing their births in 1900 is actually implemented, then there aren't any people with property X in 2000, and so their births get prevented as well, even though (in some weird counterfactual sense) you don't endorse that.
I'm not sure how much that actually matters, but it seems at least worth acknowledging.
Any action you take prevents the birth of an infinite number of counterfactual future humans. If you're going to analyze things this way, you'll have to estimate e.g. whether the total number of people born, and their utilities, in scenario 1 (people with X are born in 1900) are greater than in scenario 2 (people with X not born).
That's certainly true, but I don't understand how it relates to the policy I was referring to (Pavitra's in the great-grandparent).
The usefulness of the rule of thumb relies in part on that mostly not happening.