Do you think people who can't understand crepuscular rays would count as being deemed too dumb to reproduce?
I do not think that you are too dumb to reproduce. You have my blessing on this to proceed.
There is some merit in this idea. You do get some parents who pop out baby after baby without any ability to look after the child, so the children are either removed or have a terrible upbringing which often leads to the cycle repeating.
You have to have a licence to be able to drive a car, why should you be able to pop out a baby without any checks and balances?
Obviously defining who is able to do so and enforcing it are the tricky parts.
There is oversight in the US. Your entire community is watching you and will report you to the authorities if need be. If you are found by the government to be mentally or physically disabled you can be sterilized against your will. Mental and physical retardation is flagged by the school system at a young age. If you are a woman found to be unable to take care of yourself you can be put on forced birth control like Brittany Spears. If you do have children and are unable to take care of them, they can be be taken and provided for.
There is no test which can predict who will become an irresponsible parent, who will treat their depression with drugs, or who will not express enough to love their children. The problem is not a lack of knowledge of basic parenting - even someone with the mentality of a twelve year old knows the basics.
It's a reactive system. Neighbors, friends, and family, all have a social responsibility to report.
Which is exactly the problem; people don't get reported until it's too late and the damage is already done. Rushy is proposing a proactive system requiring any prospective parents to prove that they are qualified to bear and raise children.
I would encourage you to read up about the eugenics experiments in America over the last hundred and fifty years. It has been done and tried in an official capacity with by doctors, psychologists and family therapist progressives with the approval and support of State governments and the US Government. The Supreme Court even upheld the procedure of sterilizing people based on IQ Test. These attempts to discriminate based on intelligence failed to gain traction, however, and are considered flawed.
Again, basic parenting isn't really a matter of intelligence. Above the level of mental retardation, people with low intelligence know basic parenting. People with low intelligence can be good parents. The problem is not a lack of knowledge, or a lack of intelligence.
For example, someone may be eligible and pass the tests necessary to get into college, but there is no test that can predict whether they will drop out of college. People may start college and then become overwhelmed by life and drop out. They may be distracted by recreational activities, relationships, jobs, or fail due to lack of interest. There is no way for a school to predict that.
This has been closely studied for a very long time. If there was a feasible way to predict this, it would have been done and in place in at least a few areas.