On July 26, 1990, a quiet minority found their voice. President George Herbert
Walker Bush would sign into law the most comprehensive disability rights
legislation to date1. However, the Americans with Disabilities Act
was just the culmination of a silent minority struggle to be heard. This
struggle is not often recognized. Since this blog is designed to empower people
with disabilities and educate others, it would be inappropriate not to examine
the Disability Rights Movement's history. For a group to have a powerful voice,
they must understand their roots. In terms of the disability rights movement,
it is important to examine the key figures involved and critical events and
milestones within the training and the movement's goals up until the present day.
The term disability is defined as
"lack of adequate power, strength, or physical or mental ability;
incapacity" 2
Initially, the term eugenics was
coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1883 in his book Essays in Eugenics.
Initially, the term was meant to encourage people with good genes to procreate.
Some of Galton's followers even combined it with Gregor Mendel's inheritance
research patterns to explain the passage of certain inherited traits from
generation to generation3. It was not long before the
term eugenics would no longer have a positive connotation. Many people would
soon embrace the term eugenics and the movement that went along with it to
solve the disabled problem. They would end up passing laws that would limit
such activities as marriage and childbirth. Many regulations went as far as
allowing the forced sterilization of people with disabilities. There were
several compelling cases, which upheld this principle. Perhaps the most
influential was the Buck v. Bell decision.
To understand the Buck v. Bell case,
it is important to understand the law that prompted the Supreme Court to hear
the case in the first place. What follows is the Virginia Sterilization Act of
March 20, 19244.
"An emergency exists; this act
shall be enforced from its passage. An ACT to provide for the sexual
sterilization of inmates of State institutions in certain cases. They were
approved on March 20, 1924. Whereas, both the health of the individual patient
and the welfare of society may be promoted in certain cases by the
sterilization of mental defectives under careful safeguard and by competent and
conscientious authority, and Whereas, such sterilization may be effected in
males by the operation of vasectomy and in females by the operation of
salpingectomy, both of which said operations may be performed without serious
pain or substantial danger to the life of the patient, and Whereas, the
Commonwealth has in custodial care and is supporting in various State institutions
many defective persons who if now discharged or paroled would likely become by
the propagation of their kinda menace to society but who is incapable of
procreating might properly and safely be discharged or paroled and become
self-supporting with benefit both to themselves and to society, and Whereas,
human experience has demonstrated that heredity plays an important part in the
transmission of sanity, idiocy, imbecility, epilepsy, and crime, now, therefore
1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That whenever the
superintendent of the Western State Hospital, or the Eastern State
Hospital, or of the Southwestern State Hospital, or the Central State Hospital,
or the State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, shall believe that it is
for the best interests of the patients and of a society that any inmate of the
institution under his care should be sexually sterilized, such superintendent
is now authorized to perform, or cause to be performed by some capable
physicians or surgeon, the operation of sterilization on any such patient
confined in such institution afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that
are recurrent, idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy; provided that
such superintendent shall have first complied with the requirements of this
act. 2. Such superintendent shall first present to the special board of
directors of his hospital or colony a petition stating the facts of the case
and the grounds of his opinion, verified by his affidavit to the best of his knowledge
and belief, and praying that an order may be entered by said board requiring
him to perform or have performed by some competent the physician to be
designated by him in his said petition or by the said board in its order, upon
the inmate of his institution named in such petition, the operation of
vasectomy if upon a male and of salpingectomy if upon a female. A copy of the
said petition must be served upon the inmate together with a notice in writing
designating the time and place in the said institution, not less than thirty
days before the presentation of such petition to the said the special board of
directors when and where said the board might hear and act upon such
petition."
Based on this act, a seven-month-old
named Vivian Buck and her mother Carrie and her grandmother Emma were "feebleminded"
on May 2, 1927, by the U.S. Supreme Court. The primary reason they were
believed to be feebleminded was that Carrie had Vivian out of wedlock5.
These individuals were classified
under a term that had no clinical definition or meaning. The state of Virginia
would later apologize for its role in the eugenics movement; however, the
apology would come decades too late. The Buck v. Bell decision would give the
green light to other state laws, which would lead to the sterilization of
an estimated 65,000 individuals with disabilities6. Although
eugenics was a deplorable practice, it did not promote the killing of the
disabled population. Eugenists believed that the disabled community should not
be allowed to procreate. It is not until the Holocaust that a much greater
tragedy would occur.
Mostly everyone is familiar with
Hitler's Holocaust against the Jewish community, in which 6 million Jews
perished. However, the Jewish community was not the only one to suffer at
Hitler's hand. A program known as Aktion T-4 was instituted to eliminate
"those unworthy of life." The program was designed to destroy those
who were physically and mentally disabled. At one point in Germany, the program
even went as far as to decree on August 18, 1939, that all births of
physically and mentally challenged persons be reported to the public health
offices. This decree was later extended to adults7.
It is no wonder that people with
disabilities have undergone struggles from the beginning. They were subject to
a natural human habit—a nasty human habit of judging those different from us.
The difference is, what makes humanity great, but often it is not celebrated.
It is looked down upon. This blog examines what happens when the fear of
difference goes too far. The euthanasia and eugenics movement were perhaps some
of the darker obstacles the disabled community has had to overcome. This blog
is not meant to focus on the negative, but one cannot gloss over certain parts
when examining one's past and still hope to understand them better.
Footnotes:
1.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40205.html
2. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/disability?s=t
3.http://www.hsl.virginia.edu/historical/eugenics/2-origins.cfm
4. http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/image_header.pl?id=1236&printable=1&detailed=0
5.http://eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/static/themes/39.html
6.http://isc.temple.edu/neighbor/ds/disabilityrightstimeline.htm
7. http://www.deathcamps.org/euthanasia/t4intro.html
