down syndrome

  • Period: 1 CE to

    Down Syndrome people were thought of as shameful to humanity

    To as late as the 1990s down syndrome was thought as a shameful disgrace to humanity
  • Sterilization Law

    Sterilization Law
    The Commonwealth of Virginia passes a state law that allows for sterilization (without consent) of individuals with down syndrome
  • Influenced

    People with Down syndrome and other intellectual and developmental disabilities were a target in the eugenics movement in the United States, which actually influenced Hitler’s first mass murders under the Aktion T4 program in 1939
  • The developmental disabilities act

    The developmental disabilities act
    The Developmental Disabilities Services and Facilities Construction Act is introduced in Congress
  • The rehabilitation act

    The rehabilitation act
    The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was passed. Prohibiting discrimination in federal programs and services and all other programs or services receiving federal funds
  • The Education of All Handicapped Children Act

    requires free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive setting.
  • Period: to

    Inhuman Doctors

    doctors in the late 1980s who categorized feeding a baby with Down syndrome as a “lifesaving procedure” and proceeded to starve babies to death with Down syndrome
  • Sterilization

    Sterilization
    people with Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities were systematically physically and sexually abused through forced sterilization
  • Doctors

    Doctors refused to give life saving procedures to babies with down syndrome
  • Regret

    Regret
    The Commonwealth of Virginia House of Delegates officially expresses regret for the harm its eugenics laws caused between 1924 and 1979.