Part 5 in the 10-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?“ When Allied forces liberated the camps between the summer of 1944 and the spring of 1945, what they found shocked the world. The first liberated camp, Majdanek, in Poland, quickly revealed the horror of end-stage eugenics. The Allies’ advance was so swift that the Nazi camp personnel fled, …
Boeing Refuses to Listen to Passengers With Disabilities
At this week’s Boeing annual meeting, Able Americans Director Rachel Barkley will call out Boeing executives for refusing to establish a Disability Access Committee to improve safety and accessibility for passengers with disabilities. Rachel, who uses a wheelchair after experiencing a health crisis at age thirty, will ask executives and fellow shareholders on Friday to imagine that they too are sitting in …
The End of an Official Killing Program and Discovery of the Nazi Horror
Part 4 in the 10-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?“ The secret official and organized killing under Aktion T4 at the six killing centers continued. However, by late 1941 things were starting to fall apart. The general public were starting to realize what was happening. People living near the killing centers increasingly noticed that the grey buses with …
Life Unworthy of Life: A Tragic Reality – 1940s
Part 3 in the 10-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?“ Unofficial killing began in earnest before Aktion T4 was implemented. In the beginning, Germans with disabilities (including infants and children) were admitted to hospitals across the country for “treatment,” where they were killed in a variety of ways: lethal injections, starvation, and by deliberately shutting off heat to …
Kansas Is Proving What’s Possible with ABLE—Now Let’s Scale It
For decades, public policy sent a quiet but devastating message to people with disabilities: Stay poor or lose life-saving benefits. The Stephen Beck Jr., Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act, signed into law on December 19, 2014, was supposed to change that. And it did—on paper. But let’s be honest: A decade later, most states are still underperforming. Too …
Setting the Stage for Life Unworthy of Life – The 1930s
Part 2 in the 10-Part Series “Is Any Life Unworthy of Living?” Hitler had alluded to the Jewish Final Solution in Mein Kampf (1924), echoing many of the themes of Binding and Hoche’s 1920 ideas, including that the disabled were a state burden who could not contribute economically. As noted in Part 1, when the Nazis came to power in …
Mark Mostert: Rolling Back Progress in the Skies
“For the last 40 years, passengers with disabilities have repeatedly been disappointed in the lack of progress around air travel,” writes Able Americans Senior Researcher Mark P. Mostert, Ph.D., in a commentary syndicated through InsideSources. While “the Air Carrier Access Act of 1986 (ACAA) prohibits commercial airlines from discriminating against passengers with disabilities during air travel, …little has changed as …
Why Should They Live? The 1920s and 30s
Many people believe that eugenics is a long-discredited idea that has no part in modern civilized society. This is wildly inaccurate. Eugenics is alive and well in 2026, albeit in different ideological and legal clothing. What began in the late 1800s as a simple idea applied to the animal kingdom soon morphed into Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” arguments for …
The Airlines and Airline Manufacturers Have Had 40 Years to Support Passengers with Disabilities – With Few Exceptions, They Have Failed Miserably
Air travel for passengers with disabilities is often fraught with unnecessary and significant challenges. In the commentary below, Able Americans Senior Researcher Mark Mostert takes a closer look at the Airline Carrier Access Act, which was passed in 1986. In 2026, 40 years later, compliance with the Act and related Federal rules have largely been ignored by the airline industry. …
Rob Taishoff: Why Should My Daughter Lose Her Home Care Services Just for Crossing a State Line?
“Families move for jobs, for affordability, for safety, for caregiving and for love. People with disabilities deserve that same freedom — without fear of losing the supports that make independent life possible,” writes Rob Taishoff in a commentary published at The Hill. Rob is the chairman of the Campaign to Fix the Disability System, a coalition that includes Able Americans. …