 One of the most controversial elements of Dr. Wolfensberger's teaching and writing was on the topic of “deathmaking,” a word that he coined in the late 1970s to reflect all the many ways, from the direct to the indirect, in which people's lives could be abbreviated—in other words, the many ways in which people could be “made dead.”  Dr. Wolfensberger noticed that the legalization of abortion in the US in 1973 led very quickly to admissions of infanticide of impaired newborns, by medical personnel in prestigious hospitals, and that these admissions were accompanied by calls to legitimize such infanticide as well.At about the same time, there began the first open calls for the legalization of some form of so-called “euthanasia” for impaired people.Dr.