I found my latest soapbox.
I don’t know enough about it yet to get going for hours and hours on end if you asked me about it, but what I do know is enough to get me riled up.
I am writing a paper about the way that the disabled have been treated throughout American history, with a special emphasis on intellectual and developmental disabilities. As I’ve been doing my research, I’ve uncovered all sorts of horrible things that were done to and said about the disabled. And as I considered it, I came to the conclusion that while our actions as a society toward the disabled have changed, largely for the better, the underlying attitudes and assumptions are the same now as they were in the 19th and 20th century.
At the end of the 19th century and into the beginning of the 20th century, Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species was published and his ideas about natural selection started to circulate. Interestingly enough, one of the sources I read said that Darwin himself never applied his theory to humanity for fear of where it would lead us.[1] But it didn’t take long for others to take his theories where he apparently never intended them to go. This was the start of the American eugenics movement.
Eugenics is a so-called “science” that deals with genetics and specifically in selecting which genes are desirable and which undesirable genes should be removed from the gene pool. Intellectual and developmental disability had by this point in U.S. history come to be particularly linked to crime and poverty and immoral behavior. The narrative that was being circulated told the American people that all of the problems they observed in the cities around them with crime, poverty, and the like were linked to the “insane” – the developmentally disabled.[2] In essence, it was believed that the genetics that made them biologically and neurologically different from the rest of society were the genetics that made them criminals.
This belief couldn’t be clearer than in the words of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, after a 1927 ruling upholding forced sterilization (more on that in a moment). He said: “It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime…society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”[3]
In 1907, Indiana was the first state to pass a law to make forced sterilization legal.[4] Some states still have laws permitting forced sterilization to this day. But it began to fall out of fashion after the Nazis used sterilization to the extent that they did during World War II. The damage, however, had already been done. Under the pretense of “protecting American bloodlines” and “guarding the welfare of America,” some 47,000 developmentally disabled persons were forced to be sterilized between 1907-1949.[5]
47,000 people had their lives ruined in this way, simply because they had a disability that the larger society had been conditioned to fear.
When I first came across this in my research, my initial thought was thank God we aren’t mass sterilizing the disabled anymore! But as I continued to think about it, and as I sat down to write my paper, I couldn’t help but think about the way that the eugenics movement continues to this day. True, we may no longer be mass sterilizing the disabled (although I did read that forced sterilization does still take place in some circumstances to this day), but the underlying assumptions behind those horrendous actions are still alive and well.
What assumptions and values? The assumption that a disabled person won’t live a fulfilling life and won’t be able to contribute meaningfully to society. Values of conformity and “good” or “pure” genetics.
We see these assumptions at play in the abortion industry. One report I read said that while exact numbers are impossible (because of a lack of detailed reporting from the abortion industry) some estimates say that as many as 27,000 unborn babies are aborted each year because of a prenatal diagnosis of a likely disability. Of those, some estimate that 3,000 babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome are murdered each year before they even have a chance at life.[6]
If you take the 47,000 developmentally disabled people who were forced to undergo sterilization in the 42 years after 1907, that’s an average of 1,120 people a year in that time period. This category of “developmentally disabled” includes Down Syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, and other conditions. Now, babies with Down Syndrome alone are being killed at a rate that is roughly 2.5 times as frequent as the mass sterilizations of the first half of the 20th century.
The assumptions, ideals, and values of the early eugenics movement have not gone away. The methods have simply evolved. Justice Holmes’ words above still reflect the heart attitude of many in our nation.
A recent case from Texas illustrates this. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, many states had anti-abortion laws ready to go into effect. Texas was one such state. In November of 2023, her unborn baby girl was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a condition that leads to developmental disabilities. Cox wanted an abortion, but her doctors told her that due to the new Texas law, there was likely no one in Texas who would perform the abortion. The Center for Reproductive Rights sued on Cox’s behalf, asking for a temporary restraining order that would allow Cox to have the abortion.[7] The details of the case are not all that important here. The important thing is the idea of “the baby is going to die anyway, so we might as well abort her before she is born.” It’s based on the fact that most Trisomy 18 babies don’t live past birth. But some do.[8] Many other cases like this one in Texas are out there, with women suing for the right to abort their baby.
And I just can’t help but think as I process all of this: we aren’t God. How come we have decided as a society that we get to decide what the definition of a fulfilling life is? Why do we get to decide which lives are viable or worth living and which lives are able to be discarded? Why are we the ones who get to decide who to label as “normal” and who gets called “defective”? The truth is: we aren’t the ones who get to decide.As a society, we have tried to take this away from God. And where has it led us? To thousands of forced sterilizations and abortions because “those people aren’t worthy of having a chance at life.”
Oh, God, forgive us for the injustice we have done as a society to the disabled community.
[1] Garland E. Allen, “Social Origins of Eugenics,” Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement,accessed March 15, 2025, http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/essay1text.html.
[2] David L. Braddock and Susan L. Parish, “An Institutional History of Disability,” in Handbook of Disability Studies, ed. Gary L Albrecht, Katherine D. Seelman, Michael Burty (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc,., 2001), 31.
[3] Jordan A. Conrad, “On intellectual and developmental disabilities in the United States: A historical perspective,” Journal of Intellectual Disabilities 24, no.1 (March 2020): 90. https://doi.org/10.1177/1744629518767001.
[4] Danielle D. Fox and Irmo Marini, “The History of Treatment of People with Disabilities,” in The Psychological and Social Impact of Illness and Disability, 7th Edition, ed. Irmo Marini and Mark A. Stebnicki (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2017), 8.
[5] Braddock and Parish, “Institutional History,” 40.
[6] Mary O’Callaghan, “Prenatal Diagnosis & Disability Selective Abortion,” Teaching Human Dignity, McGrath Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame (2019): 4.
[7] Elanor Klibanoff, “Kate Cox’s case reveals how far Texas intends to go to enforce abortion laws,” The Texas Tribune, December 13, 2023, https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/31/texas-abortion-lawsuit/.
[8] Leah Savas, “Is abortion medically necessary in Texas?” World News Group, December 12, 2023, https://wng.org/podcasts/is-abortion-medically-necessary-in-texas-1702333887.
So compelling!!!
So well written and expressed!! A worthy paper topic to be sure! 👍🏻