I'd say the reverse: that selective abortions are (maybe, in some cases) similar in practice, but not in spirit to eugenics. The difference is that eugenics had an imperative to it. They wanted to 'improve the human race' through selective breeding of humans. They were concerned about the population genetics as a whole, not an individual.

And yes, it was very much an accepted area of thought and research in academia from the late 1800s to the end of the second world war. It wasn't until it became associated with Nazi Germany that the idea became taboo.