UK Disability History Month

2025 Disability, Life and Death

This year the value of Disabled People’s lives has been severely questioned. The Assisted Suicide legislation making its way through Parliament directly challenges Article 10 of the UNCRPD

“States Parties reaffirm that every human being has the inherent right to life and shall take all necessary measures to ensure its effective enjoyment by persons with disabilities on an equal basis with others.”

Challenging the right to life of disabled people or ‘useless eaters’ as the Nazis of the 3rd Reich called us is not a new phenomenon.

So called ‘Mercy Killing’ or Euthanasia has been around as long as there have been human beings. The quality of our lives is often put forward by non-disabled medical experts who seek to impose non-disabled people’s values on us for letting us die.  

Nearly every person with life long impairment will recite tales of how Doctors had told them and their parents they would not, live, walk, be educable and many such value judgements. And yet our history is full of disabled people who having received such dire warnings, have gone on to live worthwhile and productive lives. This is about providing disabled people with the adjustments and access they need, but most of all it is about challenging disabling attitudes and practices that still persist.[1]

[1] https://ukdhm.org