Should Imperfect Infants Survive?

Real life finds the principle that justice is blind embodied—all too often—in all-too-human custodians, black-robed and fraught with biases, inherently prone to err. One such mortal is Gerhard Gesell, federal judge for the District of Columbia.

The son of the famous child psychologist and pediatrician Arnold Gesell, Gerhard Gesell studied law at Yale University, the same prestigious institution with which his father was associated. No one would have seemed better qualified to consider the suit that the American Academy of Pediatrics brought to challenge a new federal regulation that required the posting of warning signs in hospital nurseries. “discriminatory failure to feed and care for handicapped INFANTS IN THIS FACILITY,” the signs said, “Is prohibited by federal law.” Violations of that civil-rights law —the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 504—were to be reported via an emergency number listed on the signs.

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Steven Baer

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Department of Health and Human Services

Real life finds the principle that justice is blind embodied—all too often—in all-too-human custodians, black-robed and fraught with biases, inherently prone to err. One such mortal is Gerhard Gesell, federal judge for the District of Columbia.

The son of the famous child psychologist and pediatrician Arnold Gesell, Gerhard Gesell studied law at Yale University, the same prestigious institution with which his father was associated. No one would have seemed better qualified to consider the suit that the American Academy of Pediatrics brought to challenge a new federal regulation that required the posting of warning signs in hospital nurseries. “discriminatory failure to feed and care for handicapped INFANTS IN THIS FACILITY,” the signs said, “Is prohibited by federal law.” Violations of that civil-rights law —the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 504—were to be reported via an emergency number listed on the signs.