‘Nothing About Us Without Us’: 16 Moments in the Fight for Disability Rights

1978

The Gang of 19 and ADAPT

On July 5, 1978, a group of 19 people gathered at one of the busiest intersections in Denver, at Colfax Avenue and Broadway, got out of their wheelchairs and lay down to stop traffic. Their goal was to protest the inaccessibility of the city’s public transit system.

The group had been pushing the city to install wheelchair lifts, and when a new fleet of buses was released without them, they were angry. The protest ultimately led to the creation of the Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (now the American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today), in 1983, which quickly expanded with chapters all around the country. The group then pushed for transportation provisions to be added to the A.D.A.

1982

‘Baby Doe’ and ‘Baby Jane Doe’

In 1982, the parents of a baby with Down syndrome in Bloomington, Ind., were advised by doctors to decline surgery to treat the baby’s blocked esophagus. Disability rights activists tried to intervene, but Baby Doe, as he came to be known, starved to death before legal action could be taken.

Dr. C. Everett Koop, the surgeon general of the United States at the time, said the boy was denied food and water not because the treatment was unreasonably risky, but because the baby was intellectually disabled, a decision he did not agree with.

In 1983, another case surfaced on Long Island that came to be known as Baby Jane Doe. The baby was born with an open spinal column; her parents opted against surgery, even though it could have prolonged her life.

The Reagan administration called for the creation of “Baby Doe squads” in which government officials, including child-protective service agents, went to hospitals to inspect reports of discrimination of newborns with illnesses.