For centuries, some infants were taken from their families and left outdoors to die because poverty made them impossible to support or because a perceived weakness or visible disability made their lives seem less worth saving. In some parts of the world, the practice continued into the 19th century.
It had a name: “infant exposure.” The term sounds almost clinical, as though naming the practice could distance those who sanctioned it from the child left outside. And for generations, societies found ways to explain that decision to themselves.
Could you imagine if that thinking hadn’t gone unchallenged?
In previous articles, I have written about efforts—including my own—to expand opportunities and demonstrate the humanitarian and economic value of providing resources early. That work has improved access to education, employment, independent living, and public life while dismantling the shame imposed on people with disabilities and their families.
I could share hundreds of stories about people of every age whose lives changed because society chose inclusion over isolation, including veterans and those supported by their families. Together, they show how much our neighborhoods gain when people receive the tools they need to contribute.
It would be reassuring to believe that thinking disappeared with the practices it produced. Yet federal policies and rhetoric now threaten to reverse some of that progress.
In June, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a new interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, challenging the longstanding understanding that states must provide services in the most integrated setting appropriate to a person’s needs. That principle moved our country away from unnecessary institutionalization and toward community-based living. Weakening it could take us backward.
For decades, the ADA has removed architectural, communication, and attitudinal barriers to everyday life. Its promise was straightforward: disability should not prevent anyone from participating fully in society. We should strengthen that promise, not narrow it.
Families of children with disabilities also face uncertainty about federal programs and whether essential services will remain accessible. Early intervention and appropriate educational supports do not encourage dependency. They help children reach their potential, giving them a better chance to work and live independently as adults.
The same is true of services and accommodations that allow adults with disabilities, including many veterans, to remain in their homes rather than being forced into more restrictive settings. When those supports disappear, the need remains, while responsibility and expense shift to families, local governments, states, hospitals, institutions, and taxpayers.
We must also consider how public figures talk about disability. A recent example of disability-related language being used as an insult came from a congressional candidate in upstate New York: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OGh-hT7GpQE
The president has likewise used such language to attack political opponents and recently suggested that a learning disability should disqualify someone from serving as president. When disability is invoked as shorthand for incapacity or ridicule, especially at the highest levels of public life, it tells millions of Americans that they are less worthy of respect.
People with disabilities and their advocates have fought to replace segregation with inclusion and institutionalization with independence. Inclusion, diversity, and equity are not merely political slogans. For people with disabilities, they determine whether someone can build a life within their community on equal terms.
Infant exposure belongs to the past, but the judgment beneath it has proved harder to bury: that some lives require more support than they are worth. Societies once found ways to explain that decision. We must not begin explaining it again.
If we dismantle the protections and opportunities so many people fought to build, we will be choosing to relearn an old lesson at an enormous human and financial cost.
And we know better… don’t we?
This article was written by Douglas J. Usiak, retired CEO of WNY Independent Living. It first appeared in print on August 31, 2026, in the Lockport Union Sun & Journal.