ABSTRACT
The Supreme Court of Canada, while considering a case of a 60-year old man kept aritifically alive, posed two central questions: When is life unworthy of living? Who should determine if someone's life is worthy or unworthy of living? In the case of Nazi Germany, there was broad acceptance of the Nazi ideology that blended in its own interpretation of eugenics and this ideology had the support of the legal, medical, military, and other systems. Regarding disabilities, German eugenics spokespersons were primarily eminent scientists whose views were increasingly hostile to supporting the lives of people with disabilities. Children with disabilities are among those who can be identified at many points in history as having been left to die by abandonment or exposure or as having been deliberated killed–presumably because it had been determined that their lives were not worth living. The killing of children with disabilities in Nazi Germany is an extreme example.
