First observed in 2012 and propagated by disability rights organizations such as Not Dead Yet and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, the day aims to bring attention to the issue of filicide of disabled children and adults and the degree to which such murders are treated as different from or more socially acceptable than similar murders of abled people.
The day has become a significant part of the disability rights movement, attracting attention from politicians and the media.
[2][3] The primary inciting incident for the day was the coverage of the murder of George Hodgins, a 22-year-old autistic man killed by his mother Elizabeth in a murder-suicide; mainstream news coverage focused on Elizabeth as a "devoted and loving" mother while treating George as a "low functioning and high maintenance" burden whose disability apparently justified his death.
[9] Outside of the United States, vigils have been held in places such as Canada,[10] Scotland,[11] Australia, and China.
[12] The Disability Memorial website collects a more complete list of names, stretching back to 1980.
[14] Similarly, a paper by the Florida A&M University Law Review found approximately half of all filicides were "altruistic", or motivated by the parental belief that killing their child was necessarily to 'end suffering'; these murders were primarily of disabled children.
In 2016, the White House liaison to the disability community read a statement from then-President Barack Obama at the Washington D.C.