Handicapped Children: Baby Doe and Uncle Sam

Abstract

ON July 5 of this year, the Department of Health and Human Services issued proposed rules to ensure that handicapped newborns, no matter how severe their handicaps, receive all possible life-sustaining treatment, unless imminent death is considered inevitable or the risks of treatment are prohibitive. The law invoked by these rules is Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of handicap. The rules are much the same as an earlier set of rules that were declared invalid by U.S. District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell on April 14. Elsewhere in this issue, the background . . .