1930s – Public Support for Euthanasia Increases as US Endures Great Depression

“The dispute over mercy killing, after subsiding in the 1920s, caught fire again in the 1930s, making these years a pivotal juncture in the history of euthanasia in America. With the coming of the Depression and more troubled economic times, Americans began talking again about suicide and controlled dying… Public opinion polls indicated in 1937 that fully 45 percent of Americans had caught up with Harry Haiselden’s belief that the mercy killing of ‘infants born permanently deformed or mentally handicapped’ was permissible.”