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Under the T 4 Euthanasie program of Nazi Germany, people with physical and mental disabilities were put to death against their will by their physicians. These individuals were oppressed in every sense of the word. They had no constitutional rights to protect their lives and their liberty. They had no statutory rights to protect them from discrimination and ensure their personal autonomy. They had no disability rights/independent living movement to secure such rights and no guarantee that such rights were enforced. Their horrible oppression is not comparable to the situation of people with disabilities in the United States.
At no time in modern history has societal oppression of people with disabilities been more starkly revealed than in the German T 4 Euthanasie program of the Third Reich (Gallagher, 1997). Throughout the first part of the 20th century, disabled persons were widely viewed in the Western world as flawed individuals and treated as second-class citizens (Eisenberg, Griggins, & Duval, 1982). It was society's responsibility to provide care, compassion, and charity to such people, but often they were held to be incapable of making the decisions and assuming the responsibilities ordinarily borne by ablebodied people. For example, in America up through the middle of the 20th century, persons with disabilities were interned against their will; sterilized without their permission (Buck v. Bell, 1927); and denied education, transportation, employment, and the right to vote (Gallagher, 1997). Disabled persons were denied control over their own lives and bodies.
Over the last generation, things have changed. The American disability rights movement-of, by, and for persons with disabilities-has made great strides towards the goal of full inclusion of, and autonomy for, each and every disabled person (Shapiro, 1993). The movement holds that disabled people are full and equal citizens of the United States and must have equal access to all aspects of American life. Decisions affecting a person with disability must be made by that person and no one else. "Nothing about me, without me," is the slogan of ADAPT, the disability activist group (Charlton, 1998). This personal autonomy, this control over one's self, is surely the very basis of disability rights. What happened in Nazi Germany illustrates, in high relief, what can happen to disabled people when they are...